Art Collector bids $4,000 on broken vacuum cleaner only to discover it was trash:

https://artinc.co/art-collector-bids-4000-on-broken-vacuum-cleaner-only-to-discover-it-was-trash/

A contemporary art exhibition took an unexpected turn this week when an art collector offered $4,000 for what he believed was an experimental sculpture, only to discover that the "artwork" was actually a broken vacuum cleaner used by the venue's cleaning staff.

The battered black vacuum, complete with a tangled power cord, scuffed plastic casing and a cracked dust compartment, was sitting several feet away from a collection of minimalist sculptures.

The incident has since become the unofficial talking point of the exhibition, with visitors joking that the gallery may have accidentally stumbled upon its most valuable conceptual artwork.

It turns out, however, this is far from the first time this kind of misunderstanding has occurred. The art world has been confusing art with rubbish for quite some time.

In 2024, a lift technician at the LAM Museum in the Netherlands took one look at two discarded-looking beer cans and decided they had served their purpose. Unfortunately, they were actually All the Good Times We Spent Together, an artwork by Alexandre Lavet consisting of two painstakingly hand-painted cans. The technician tossed them in the bin, where a curator later managed to rescue them just in time.

A similar case occurred at Tate Britain in 2004, when a cleaner came across a transparent rubbish bag filled with paper and other waste. It was, rather inconveniently, part of an artwork by Gustav Metzger. The bag was thrown away and even made it into a crusher before the museum realized its mistake. 

And then there was Damien Hirst. In 2001, a cleaner at London's Eyestorm gallery arrived in the morning to find empty beer bottles, coffee cups, ashtrays and other debris scattered around the space. Assuming someone had simply forgotten to clean up after a party, he did what any good cleaner would do: he put the entire thing in bin bags and threw it out. The only problem was that Hirst had deliberately arranged the mess as an artwork the night before. 

The art world is full of snobs and pretentious people. Good luck to those [con] artists who can convince these fools that trash is treasure.