“Take the Money and Run”: Artist Ordered to Return $77,000 for Blank Canvases
Jens Haaning's controversial artwork aimed to critique unfair wages but sparked a two-year legal battle instead.
In a bizarre twist of the art world, Danish artist Jens Haaning has been ordered to return $77,000 to a Danish museum after submitting two blank canvases titled Take the Money and Run.
Haaning had been commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Aalborg to recreate earlier works featuring real banknotes representing average incomes in Austria and Denmark. Instead, he delivered empty canvases, claiming the act was itself the artwork—a statement about unfair labor wages.
While the museum director initially laughed at the stunt, a Copenhagen court ruled that Haaning breached his contract by refusing to return the lent money, sparking a nearly two-year legal battle.
The artist argued the museum gained more value from the global PR storm than the money itself, but the court was unmoved. Haaning must now repay nearly all the funds, minus a small fee.
The verdict closes one of the art world’s strangest disputes, proving that even in art, sometimes you can’t just take the money and run.
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