Banksy vs Bristol Museum

BANKSY vs BRISTOL MUSEUM – DAVID – 2009
Lithographic exhibition poster
59 × 42 cm
Edition size unknown

In the summer of 2009, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery was taken over by an extraordinary exhibition by the infamous local artist. Overnight, the museum was transformed into a surreal cabinet of “unnatural history”: fish fingers swam in a goldfish bowl, while hot dogs and chicken nuggets appeared throughout the exhibition spaces. Banksy’s paintings were installed among the Old Masters, and sculptures and objects were placed deliberately and incongruously within the museum’s permanent displays.

The main entrance was reimagined as a sculpture hall, accompanied by a burnt-out ice cream van emitting an eerie soundtrack of distorted tunes, while a giant ice cream slowly melted on its roof.

The exhibition was an immediate and overwhelming success. Some visitors queued for up to seven hours to experience this unique phenomenon. More than one hundred works by the artist were shown, most of which had never been exhibited publicly before.