"If the museum didn’t want people to follow the artist’s instructions, they should put up a sign to make that clear, she told police."

A 91-year-old woman inked words into "Reading-work-piece," which basically looks like a crossword puzzle. The sign next to it read "Insert words."

Somehow this piece has been around, unmarked, since 1977.

Eva Kraus, the museum director,  said the damage was not permanent and would probably be relatively easy to repair. "We do realize that the old lady didn’t mean any harm," she said. "Nevertheless, as a state museum couldn’t avoid making a criminal complaint. Also for insurance reasons we had to report the incident to the police.... We will let the lady know that the collector took the damage to the work in good humour, so she doesn’t have a sleepless night," Ms Kraus said.

The museum said that in future it would alter the label for the work to make it clear visitors were not permitted to fill in the blanks.

Doesn't that wreck the work of art? It's conceptual art, a Fluxus movement thing.



Based on that I say: Screw the collector. What was the artist, Arthur Köpcke, doing and what the woman's act mean to him? His Wikipedia page is not in English, but here's something:

In the mid-1960s Arthur Köpcke worked on a series of works that he called Reading-Work-Pieces. The individual ”pieces” consist of a wide range of materials, including picture puzzles, tests used within perception psychology, long philosophical texts, crosswords, and instructions for perfectly simple everyday actions. He painted the pieces in oil on canvas, adding cuttings from newspapers or magazines.

With his reading and training pieces, the artist wished to increase the spectators’ awareness of the systems, actions, and rituals that we persist in and carry out every day without reflecting on them. Behind the seemingly disparate and random materials, the cryptic statements, the subtly humorous tasks, and the banal pictures lies a deep interest in the functions and meanings of signs and sign systems....

So can we go for some depth here? 

George Brecht composed "Drip Music": "a source of water and an empty vessel are arranged so that the water falls into the vessel."

He'd write an "event score" -- "printed on a small white card that he would mail to friends.... Mr. Brecht said that he did not care if any of his event scores were realized and that he did not think that there was a correct way to perform one."



Back in the 1950s, when Jackson Pollock was painting (doing things with paint), you had to ask yourself: What is the next step? First, Brecht tried painting "using chance operations and materials like bed sheets, ink and marbles." But it's better -- is it not? -- to rid yourself of the paint altogether, and then rid yourself of the work itself: Just write a brief description on a card.

In those days, there were no blogs. But it was like blogging, no? A few words on a blank white rectangle are enough.

And yet, there are all those serious people in that video clip with their microphones and watering cans. Are they any less annoying than mimes? And if you're going to perform this minimal, quiet music, you've got to find a space that isn't horrifically overwhelmed with the mechanical noise of a forced air system that drowns out the dripping.

But the dripping goes on whether you hear it or not, and now the last drop has dribbled out for George Brecht, the Fluxus artist.

Dead at age 82.