There’s a new Banksy Museum in New York City, but there’s hitch: there are no original Banksy works being displayed there.
Why, you may ask? Because their aim is to recreate the experience of happening upon a Banksy graffiti, in its natural setting; that could be any wall in any an urban site, certainly not a gallery or a museum.
This museum setting feels realistic enough for such a serendipitous event to occur: a fake manhole cover, the ubiquitous urban trash scattered about, and plenty of fake brick or concrete walls that are the “canvas” for Banksy’s iconic pictures of children, police officers, rats and other urban scenes.
This is a museum of replicas, and its founder, Hazis Vardar, who privately collects original Banksys and opened a museum of replicas in Paris several years ago, said he isn’t worried about the artist’s lack of involvement.
“Banksy changed the rules. If you want to organize something about Banksy, you have to change the rules also,” he said on a recent walk through the exhibit.
Street art is often subject to vandalism or weather damage, so Vardar’s decision, in part, stems from the transient nature of street art and the challenges of preserving works that were never meant to last. While some may question the authenticity of this approach, the museum’s founder views it as a preservation effort for public enjoyment.
However, Vardar’s approach—some would say appropriation of—to Banksy art works, has sparked debate among art critics and intellectual property experts, who argue that replicating Banksy’s work indoors for a fee changes the context and meaning of the art, potentially undermining the artist’s original intent of free public access and subversion.
But Vardar described Banksy as a pirate who has himself challenged the long-established rules on “authenticity” and artists’ rights. For decades, the British street artist has rejected the practice of signing his works, and surprising city dwellers and the art world with his satiric murals and pop-up exhibits that appear suddenly overnight in the most unlikely places—certainly not in museums or galleries. And because much of Banksy’s graffiti is created on walls and buildings that don’t belong to him, they’re technically vandalism, thereby eluding both the rules of the art game, and also its protections. They are painted over by other people or sold to private galleries and collectors without any legal repercussions.
“Sometimes the cleaning team of the city, they just clean over it in the morning,” said Vardar. In his mind, the Banksy Museum is doing Banksy and the public a favor by preserving at least the replica of any original that may have been destroyed.
Leila Amineddoleh, an art and intellectual property attorney, does not have such a “laissez-faire” or benevolent view of Vardar’s Museum of replicas.
“There are tons of replicas of the Mona Lisa, and that’s not preserving the original,” she said. “I would argue the same for Banksy.”
Amineddoleh argued that by taking art meant to be site-specific indoors and charging a $30 entrance fee, the museum not only changes the meaning, but undercuts Banksy’s core mission.
“The subversion, making his message available to the public for free, that’s a really important part of Banksy’s message,” she said.
Banksy himself has a clear view on the subject: he doesn’t want his work used in this way, more than for any other reason, because he rejects the commercialization of art. In one of the museum’s staircases, there’s a Banksy quote painted on the wall that reads “Copyright is for losers.”
However, Amineddoleh said that notwithstanding Banksy’s personal ideas on licensing and intellectual property, it doesn’t change how the law applies to him. “He automatically had a copyright when he created this artwork,” she said. “The fact that he doesn’t like copyright doesn’t really make a difference.”
Vardar is holding firm: essentially offering a version of the famous rebuttal to any argument, “take me to court,” saying that if Banksy has any issues with the museum, he could sue.
This isn’t likely to happen and perhaps Vardar already knows it. “The issue is Banksy never wants to sue because he tries to conceal his identity, and I think that’s one of the reasons he’s become so popular,” said Amineddoleh. “There’s this mystique around who he is, and if he destroys that mystique, maybe he would be destroying some of the value of his art.”
