Museum worker sacked for putting up his own painting

‘We find this funny and would like to get to know the artist ... there’s no anger, word of honour’

A GERMAN museum worker has been sacked for putting one of his own paintings on display in the hope it would make him famous.

The unnamed technical worker, at Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne, believed that secretly installing his own work next to the likes of Henri Matisse and Salvador Dali might lead to an “artistic breakthrough”, police said.

According to Suddeutsche Zeitung,a German newspaper, the 51-year-old smuggled his painting into the museum and put it up on a wall.

It appears that no one caught on to the ruse at first, presumably as there would be nothing unusual about a technical worker tinkering with the museum’s exhibits.

The painting remained on display for an undisclosed period of time, and the worker was dismissed once museum staff discovered his daring deception.

Museum chiefs have also reported the worker to police for committing criminal damage, after he drilled two holes into a wall.

It was not clear if this was related to a separate incident or was part of the worker’s attempts to make his own painting display look legitimate.

The style and qualities of the painting are shrouded in mystery: the museum has only disclosed its dimensions, 24in by 47 n (60cm by 120cm). The decision to both sack the worker and report him to local police suggests that the museum’s leadership did not see the funny side of the incident.

“The supervisors notice something like this immediately,” a spokesman for Pinakothek der Moderne told Süddeutsche Zeitung.

A similar incident occurred a few weeks ago in the city of Bonn, where a student smuggled her own work into the Bundeskunsthalle and fixed it to the wall with double-sided sticky tape.

The deception went unnoticed until the end of the exhibition. Bundeskunsthalle staff also adopted a more lighthearted approach to the ruse.

“We find this funny and would like to get to know the artist,” the museum wrote on X. “Get in touch! There’s no anger, word of honour.”

The Munich museum did not respond to when asked if it had any photographs of the painting in question.