Sculpture Discarded by Worker at Museum Who Mistook It for Rubbish

An artwork comprising two dented beer cans was mistaken for the very objects that inspired it and unceremoniously tossed in the trash by a worker at a Lisse, Netherlands, museum before being rescued and restored to view. TitledAll the Good Times We Spent Together, the 1988 work by French artist Alexandre Lavet had been installed atop a glass elevator at Lam, a museum devoted to food and eating. Its casual placement and realistic appearance, which the artist achieved by painstakingly detailing each can in acrylic paint, were meant to evoke detritus left behind during construction, and this is exactly how it was treated by a visiting elevator mechanic, who binned the crumpled containers.

Lam makes a point of displaying work in unusual places in order to provide stimulating experiences for the viewer. “He was just doing his job in good faith,” museum director Sietske van Zanten explained on Lam’swebsite, noting that the tidy technician had stepped in to cover for his regular counterpart that day. “In a way, it’s a testament to the effectiveness of Alexandre Lavet’s art.”

Curator Elisah van den Bergh, who noticed the work missing, eventually discovered it in a trash bag that had not yet been hauled to its final destination. The cans, which were undamaged, were cleaned and awarded pride of place on a plinth immediately inside the museum’s entrance. “We wanted to give them their moment in the spotlight,” said van den Bergh, who hinted that the vaunted vessels would next go on display in a “surprising” location.

The work is not the first to have been mistaken for garbage by a museum staffer, as evidenced by the fate of a Damien Hirst work comprising ashtrays, coffee cups, candy wrappers, and empty beer bottles that was largely swept up during a 2001 gallery exhibition (with some portions recovered thereafter). The pendulum swings the other way as well, as suggested by the accidental 2017 enshrining of a pineapple left on the floor of an exhibition by students, or the 2016 elevation of a pair of eyeglasses introduced into a museum gallery by a teenaged prankster.