A Dutch museum recovered an artwork that looks like a pair of empty beer cans after a worker mistakenly threw it in the trash, thinking it was garbage.
The artwork, titled All The Good Times We Spent Together by French artist Alexandre Lavet, was displayed in an elevator at the Lisser Art Museum in Lisse, western Netherlands.
Hand-painted with acrylics, the beer cans symbolize “precious moments with friends” after drinking together and “required a lot of time and effort to create,” the museum said.
A Dutch art museum managed to save a beer can artwork after an elevator mechanic threw it in the trash, thinking it was garbage
Image credits: LAM museum
When curator Elisah van den Bergh returned from a short trip, she noticed that the piece, which has dents that make it appear like discarded cans, was nowhere to be found.
Van den Bergh managed to save the artwork from the trash just before it was taken away.
“We have now put the work in a more traditional place on a plinth so it can rest after its adventure,” Froukje Budding, a spokesperson for the museum, told AFP.
Lavet’s painted cans are now being temporarily displayed at the entrance of the museum “to put the work in the spotlight.”
The artwork, titled All The Good Times We Spent Together, was created by French artist Alexandre Lavet and “required a lot of time and effort”
Image credits: Alexandre Lavet
Image credits: LAM Museum
The museum had originally exhibited the beer cans in the elevator as part of their aim to “try to surprise the visitor all the time,” Budding added.
The elevator mechanic who mistook the painted cans for trash “was just doing his job” and there are “no hard feelings” toward him, she said.
“We don’t blame this elevator mechanic. He replaced a regular mechanic who knew the museum through and through. Director of @sietskevanzanten looks at it this way; ‘On a positive note, it’s a compliment to the artist, ’” the Lisser Art Museum wrote on Instagram on October 1.
“Miraculously, the cans were intact after some cleaning,” the museum shared.
The Lisser Art Museum decided to display Lavet’s work in a glass elevator to surprise visitors and “keep them on their toes”
Image credits: lam_museum
Image credits: Alexandre Lavet
Museum director Sietske van Zanten explained that the beer cans were part of an art collection based on food and consumption.
“Our art encourages visitors to see everyday objects in a new light.
“By displaying artworks in unexpected places, we amplify this experience and keep visitors on their toes.”
According to the French artist’s website, the beer cans “are a tribute to Brussels streets, artists’ studios, friends’ flats, parties, exhibition openings at galleries and artist-run spaces, and to this common and familiar object who brings people and friends together.”
The design was created in 2016 when Lavet arrived in Belgium’s capital, where he met friends between 2013 and 2016. In 2017, he decided to redesign them.
The hand-painted beer cans symbolize “precious moments with friends” after drinking together
Image credits: lam_museum
The museum said the elevator mechanic was “just doing his job” and there are “no hard feelings”
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This is not the first time an artist and an outside observer have had differing views on an item displayed in an art gallery or museum.
In 2023, a hungry art student named Noh Huyn-soo grabbed a banana that had been duct-taped to a wall as part of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s art installation in Seoul.
After eating the fruit, the man reattached the banana skin to the wall at the Leeum Museum of Art in the South Korean capital.
Huyn-soo said he had eaten the banana because he was hungry after skipping breakfast.
However, the art student later explained that he thought “damaging a work of modern art could also be [interpreted as] artwork,” and he had reattached the skin as a “joke.”
“I thought it would be interesting … isn’t it taped there to be eaten?”
The funny incident reignited the debate about which items fall into the category of “art”
The post Beer Can Artwork Accidentally Thrown In Bin By Museum Staff Member, Who Mistook It For Trash first appeared on Bored Panda.
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