Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.
A cleaner in the Tate Gallery threw out a bag of garbage because, after all, it was trash. But — you know where this is going, right? — it was part of a work of art.
Eventually the material was found, but it had to be replaced by the artist because — if you can believe this — it had been damaged.
Isn’t there something wrong with that concept: the notion of garbage being “damaged”? I don’t know if I can wrap my head around that. (“I’m sorry, sir, that garbage is not in good enough condition to throw out.”)
Anyway, the wire-service folks should save this story for re-use, since it tends to happen in some modern art museum every couple of years, and the piece will be just as good next time. All they’ll need to do is change the names.
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A couple of years ago, I went to the Tate because I was in London on business and our office was right across the river from the gallery. I thought that the collection was comprised of either English landscape painting or modernist garbage. Literally, in the last case, as it turns out.