The Cheekiest Artist of Modern Times?

One of the students in my 1L Contracts class pointed me to this delightful article from the New York Times -- delightful because this is going to be so fun for us to discuss in class (here)

Here is the story as I understand it. A Danish artist, Jens Haaning, was commissioned by a Danish museum (the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art) to reproduce a couple of his prior works, where he had framed piles of real euros and kroner to symbolize wages and work in Austria and Denmark.  To do the reproduction work, the artist was paid 10,000 kroner and then also given a bunch of cash (532, 549 kroner) to put in the installation pieces.

The cheeky artist sent in a couple of blank canvases titled "Take the Money and Run", which seem to describe exactly what he did.  (The Times article literally has multiple photos of guests to the museum admiring the blank canvases -- or at least looking at them with interest).

The artist says that he gave them art -- symbolizing taking the money and running, (a modern critique of capitalism?). The museum director, Mr. Lasse Anderson (representing the capitalist museum?), appears neither amused nor pleased. He says: breach of contract.  

It is simply not possible to make this stuff up.  Maybe Tess and Dave will do an episode about this case for their brilliant Promises, Promises podcast?

I very much want the artist to win the contract suit. But if the museum director is right that the contract was for a reproduction of the prior piles of cash pieces (which seems likely from what the Times piece tells us), Jens will probably have to give the moolah back.  But not until after having gotten international notoriety as the cheekiest artist of modern times. And maybe that's all he was going for after all. Win win. 

I can only begin to imagine the kind of fun opinion someone like Richard Posner might have written on a case like this.

Many thanks to Maggie Rosenberg, 1L at U Virginia.