Please Don't Step in the Peanut Butter
When 'look, don't touch' meets 1,000 litres of lunch
Image: Unsplash
- Repair Cost
- Billed to visitors
- Curator's Blood Pressure
- 80%
- Embarrassment Level
- 7/10
- Recovered?
- Repaired (smoothed over)
- Selfie Involved?
- No
Wim T. Schippers' 'Peanut Butter Platform' — more than 1,000 litres of peanut butter spread across a gallery floor — was left unbarriered, and four visitors promptly stepped straight into it.
When the installation opened in Rotterdam in 2011, the museum deliberately chose not to install barriers, believing they would spoil the work's presentation. Visitors promptly proved otherwise, leaving footprints that conservators repaired by smoothing fresh peanut butter across the surface.
Four separate people wandered into the sea of spread, and the museum later billed them for restoration costs. It turns out 'look, don't touch' becomes a great deal harder when the artwork looks like lunch.