Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110

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Consumerism and hedonism display? "Absolute rubbish!" say the cleaners

It's not the first time that cleaners have inadvertently discarded a valuable museum piece thinking it's rubbish, and seeing a picture of the exhibit in this particular case, they can probably be forgiven for their mistake...

The artwork, by Goldschmied & Chiari, in Museion Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, focused on 1980s' consumerism and hedonism, by socialist politicians and their never-ending parties.

"At the end of any self-respecting party there's always a bit of a mess," says the museum's blurb on the discarded exhibit. "And if the party is a widespread state of mind that lasts a decade and becomes a whole chapter in Italian history, what's left once it's all over is a sorry sight indeed."

This must have been just what the cleaners thought, when they came across the result: a work staging the scene after the end of a party: the perfect metaphor for the decade. As the artists explain: "The installation in the Museion studio house presents the scene at the end of a party. The work, which is only visible when the museum is closed, from dusk till dawn, shows the aftermath of the party, the leftovers of the feast: the metaphorical tree of abundance in ruins."

So, seeing the discarded Champagne bottles, streamers and cigarette butts supposedly strewn (rather than carefully placed) across the floor, the cleaners cleaned it up.

All was not lost luckily, as the 'rubbish' had not been collected when the error was discovered and the exhibition was quickly reassembled.

29th October 2015