ATM: Art Trumps Money

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Filed under: Art Pranks, Pranksters

From ArtNet.com, April 23, 2009

New York artist Steve Miller took to the Brandeis campus recently for “ATM: Art Trumps Money,” a project that involved the posting of 40 ATM signs all over the grounds, including in the museum”™s own window. The gag suggests, of course, that the Brandeis trustees are treating the museum collection as a source of ready money. Brandeis professor Mark Auslander has a long commentary on Miller”™s piece on YouTube, complete with footage of students making the signs. Auslander frames “ATM” both as a topical intervention and a larger point about the “a hyper-intensification of the art-capitalist nexus.”

Miller”™s project coincided with Geoff Hargadon”™s “Cash for Your Warhol” project, a guerrilla art prank that also involved signs posted outside the embattled museum [see Artnet News, Apr. 16, 2009].