A museum loaned Jens Haaning, a Danish conceptual artist, $84,000 to create art. Haaning turned in a blank canvas titled "Take the Money and Run".
The museum thought it was going to get remakes of two earlier works Haaning has in the Kunsten museum in Denmark.
The originals were made of cash and displayed Danish krone and Euro banknotes in a frame. They represent the average annual income of Danish and Austrian people -- about $84,000.
The director of the Kunsten museum, Lasse Andersson, told Insider that Haaning may be in breach of contract if he fails to return the cash. It was for material, not payment.
Haaning sent two empty frames instead and emailed the museum to tell them he'd decided to make new artwork.
That email is displayed with the empty canvasses in an exhibit titled "Work It Out".
Haaning told CNN that he has no plans to return the money, despite an agreement that he would refund the museum on Jan. 16 of 2022.
He told The Guardian he would keep it in a protest against low pay.
The Guardian reported that the museum gave him $3,900 in addition to the cash for the artwork. Haaning told CNN that the fee alone would leave him out of pocket.
"The work is that I have taken their money," The Guardian reported Haaning saying on Danish radio. "It's not theft. It is breach of contract, and breach of contract is part of the work."
Andersson told CNN, however, that the museum provides reasonable artist fees. He also told Insider that they were ready to take legal action if Haaning did decide to keep it. But, he added, none of this was shocking.
"I'm difficult to shock," he said, adding: "When I phoned Jens Thursday evening last week, I said that he shocked my curatorial staff and he made me laugh."
While Andersson may not be alarmed, the curators are very upset. The museum, Andersson said, is "not wealthy" and any misuse of funds was taken very seriously.
"There have been a lot of people saying that I'm a naive director and it's a misuse of public and private money," he said.
Despite being on opposite sides here, Andersson still defended the work.
"We need the uncontrolled and the unforeseen and the unknown to re-establish ourselves as human beings in relation to society," he said.
The stunt did, after all, spark conversation.
And even after all this, when asked if he'd work with Haaning again, Andersson said, "If he returns the money."
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