Pranks are nothing new to the art world. Earlier this month, two students became famous for leaving a pineapple on a museum table and returning to find it in a display case. Art is subjective, to say the least. And if you're a museum-goer, you probably don't want to be the person who doesn't "get" the art — which is why most of us are guilty of staring blankly at an exhibit when we have no idea what it means.
But the instinct to act like we "get" art backfired for some tourists who recently visited the Whitney Museum of American Art. In a video for Vanity Fair, author and editor Derek Blasberg teamed up with Katy Perry to create a prank exhibit, on view for unsuspecting museum guests. The pair displayed the artist's name as "Katheryn Hudson," which is Katy Perry's birth name.
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The exhibit, naturally, was named "Bon Appétit," the title of Perry's recent single. And it couldn't have been a more fitting title — the prank included serving Perry's head on a silver platter, thanks to a long tablecloth and a carefully constructed table.
For the prank, Blasberg acts as a museum curator and asks people if they'd like to be a part of a "video exhibit." He takes them into an enclosed room before revealing Perry's head on the platter. With one tour group, Blasberg describes the display as "a rumination on the feast of life and everything we have to eat."
To their credit, the museum-goers don't seem very surprised at the sight of Katy Perry herself. "It's a human head," one person whispers. But in the name of Respecting Art, these people did an impressively good job at keeping their cool. And when one person does say, "That looks like Katy Perry," Perry jokes that she's Miley Cyrus.
It's very weird, but then again, isn't all art?
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