Banksy does Manhattan

Many a visitor to New York's Museum of Modern Art has probably thought, "I could do that."

A British graffiti artist who goes by the name "Banksy" went one step further, by smuggling in his own picture of a soup can and hanging it on a wall, where it stayed for more than three days earlier this month before anybody noticed.

The prank was part of a coordinated plan to infiltrate four of New York's top museums on a single day.

The largest piece, which he smuggled into the Brooklyn Museum, was a 2 foot by 1.5 foot oil painting of a colonial-era admiral, to which the artist had added a can of spray paint in his hand and anti-war graffiti in the background.

The other two targets were the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History, where he hung a glass-encased beetle with fighter jet wings and missiles attached to its body. . .

It is not the first time he has staged such stunts. Last year he smuggled work into the Louvre in Paris and London's Tate, attracting attention in the media.

From Reuters. Banksy's website is here; pictures of the installations in progress (and much more) at the Wooster Collective website.

Posted by David on March 24, 2005 8:02 PM