A Dutch museum recovered an artwork that looks like a pair of empty beer cans after a worker mistakenly threw it in the trash, thinking it was garbage.

The artwork, titled All The Good Times We Spent Together by French artist Alexandre Lavet, was displayed in an elevator at the Lisser Art Museum in Lisse, western Netherlands.

Hand-painted with acrylics, the beer cans symbolize “precious moments with friends” after drinking together and “required a lot of time and effort to create,” the museum said.

A Dutch art museum managed to save a beer can artwork after an elevator mechanic threw it in the trash, thinking it was garbage

Image credits: LAM museum

“Curator Elisah van den Bergh came back from a short holiday and spitted that the works were missing,” Froukje Budding, a spokesperson for the museum, told Bored Panda via email.

“She immediately knew that the lift mechanic had something to do with it. He is the only person that can reach the works there.”

Van den Bergh managed to save the artwork from the trash just before it was taken away.

“She started some detective work and luckily found the works in a bin bag. Of course, it was a big shock at first,” Budding added.

“Miraculously, both cans were found intact. In the end, it is a blessing in an accident.”

The artwork, titled “All The Good Times We Spent Together,” was created by French artist Alexandre Lavet

Image credits: Alexandre Lavet

Image credits: LAM Museum

The LAM museum had originally exhibited the artwork in the elevator to surprise visitors.

The cans have since been cleaned and are now temporarily displayed on a traditional plinth at the museum entrance.

“We wanted to give them their moment in the spotlight. As for where the artwork will be displayed next, that’s yet to be revealed. We enjoy surprising our visitors, so no space is off-limits.”

The elevator technician was “just doing his job in good faith,” Budding said, explaining that the employee was covering for the museum’s regular technician, who is well acquainted with the building and its exhibits.

“And, in a way, it’s a testament to the effectiveness of Alexandre Lavet’s art.”

The Lisser Art Museum decided to display Lavet’s work in a glass elevator to surprise visitors

Image credits: lam_museum

Image credits: Alexandre Lavet

Although he may not have intended it, the worker’s mishap actually helped spread the word about the painted cans and piqued people’s curiosity about the pieces.

“We already notice that the intensity of looking at this work of art has grown. People even come especially to the museum to discover these special hand-painted beer cans!”

According to the French artist’s website, the beer cans “are a tribute to Brussels streets, artists’ studios, friends’ flats, parties, exhibition openings at galleries and artist-run spaces, and to this common and familiar object who brings people and friends together.”

The design was created in 2016 when Lavet arrived in Belgium’s capital, where he met friends between 2013 and 2016. In 2017, he decided to redesign them.

The museum stated the elevator mechanic who found the cans was “just doing his job in good faith”

Image credits: lam_museum

Lavet’s beer cans are part of an international art collection at the Lisser Art Museum based on food and consumption.

Other pieces include a box of chocolates the size of footballs, a banquet table where wine and champagne slosh over the rims of glasses, and a three-meter-long string of moldy gemstone grapes.

The exhibition, which invites visitors to “look at ordinary things like food and drink in an extraordinary way,” also features pieces from artists like Yinka Shonibare, Kathleen Ryan, Itamar Gilboa, Raquel van Haver, Ron Mueck, Susan Philipsz, and Michael Raedecker.

Following the mistake, visitors are specifically coming to the museum to see the painted beer cans

 

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A post shared by LAM museum (@lam_museum)

This is not the first time an artist and an outside observer have had differing views on an item displayed in an art gallery or museum.

In 2023, a hungry art student named Noh Huyn-soo grabbed a banana that had been duct-taped to a wall as part of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s art installation in Seoul.

After eating the fruit, the man reattached the banana skin to the wall at the Leeum Museum of Art in the South Korean capital.

Huyn-soo said he had eaten the banana because he was hungry after skipping breakfast. 

However, the art student later explained that he thought “damaging a work of modern art could also be [interpreted as an] artwork,” and he had reattached the skin as a “joke.”

“I thought it would be interesting … isn’t it taped there to be eaten?”

The funny incident reignited the debate about which items fall into the category of “art”

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