German museum fires employee who hung up his own artwork

Employers love a self-starter — but when a worker with lofty ambitions decided to mount his own piece at an art museum in Munich this year, his efforts were not appreciated by his superiors.

The technical employee was fired from the Pinakothek der Moderne after he surreptitiously hung his approximately 2-by-4-foot drawing in the institution’s modern art collection in late February, spokesperson Tine Nehler said by email.

His piece would have briefly joined works from Pablo Picasso and German expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in the museum’s expansive collection, though the maverick draftsman’s debut did not exactly draw acclaim.

“As a result of this incident, he has been banned from the museum until further notice, and his employment will not be continued,” Nehler said, adding that the work was taken down “at short notice.” It was not clear how long it remained on view.

Nehler described the museum’s displays as carefully curated. “It is no fun to simply hang one’s own work as a ‘disruptor,’” she said.

She acknowledged that employees may have a “high level of identification with their place of work” but said they “must comply with security concepts and must not jeopardize valuable cultural assets.”

The Pinakothek der Moderne did not identify the worker in question or comment on the quality of his work.

German police are investigating the man for property damage — he drilled holes in the wall to hang the drawing. He said he hoped it would be his “artistic breakthrough,” German media reported.

This avant-garde approach to making it in the art world isn’t without precedent.

There is a long history of artists supporting their endeavors by working in museums. So many creatives take museum jobs that several institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection in New York City, have even staged shows featuring their employees’ work.

Dan Flavin, a minimalist known for his fluorescent light installations, dedicated multiple works to people he met while employed as a guard and in the mailroom at museums in New York. Sol LeWitt, known for his instruction-based wall drawings, said in a 1994 interview discussing his time working at MoMA — which included selling books — that he was in the right place at the right time: “If I hadn’t been working here … it may not have clicked.”

At least one museum has had a positive reaction to an unsolicited addition to its display. After Danai Emmanouilidis added her painting to an exhibit at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, it hung there undetected for the rest of the exhibition. When the museum discovered this in October last year, it posted on social media in German: “We think this is funny and would like to get to know the artist. So get in touch! There will be no trouble.”

The Munich museum worker, however, might have been channeling an even more famous artist.

Before the street artist Banksy became a household name, they smuggled artworks into some of the world’s most famous museums, including the Tate Britain, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA.

When NPR asked Banksy in 2005 for the reasoning behind the stunts, the artist replied simply that the paintings “were quite good.”

“I thought, you know, put them in a gallery. Otherwise, they would just sit at home and no one would see them,” the artist said.

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