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# Dutch Pranksters Punk Museumgoers with IKEA Art
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/dutch-pranksters-punk-museumgoers-with-ikea-art/
- Published: 2015-03-19T18:49:59.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:31:44.000Z
- Description: In a playful prank on some art viewers, a roughly €10 work of IKEA art was placed in the galleries of the Museum Arnhem in the Netherlands, where visitors bestowed praise on the impostor.
- Author: Allison Meier
- Tags: In Brief, Amsterdam, Ikea, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:08 (2014, 2015, part 2)

![Viewing an IKEA painting as a museum piece (via lifehunterstv on YouTube, screenshot by the author for Hyperallergic)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/03/ikeapainting1.jpg)

Viewing an IKEA painting as a museum piece (via lifehunterstv on YouTube, screenshot by the author for Hyperallergic)

In a playful prank on some art viewers, a roughly €10 work of Ikea art was placed in the galleries of the [Museum Arnhem](http://www.museumarnhem.nl/?ref=hyperallergic.com) in the Netherlands, where visitors bestowed praise on the impostor.

Created by the Amsterdam-based [LifeHunters](https://www.youtube.com/user/lifehunterstv?ref=hyperallergic.com), a self-proclaimed “online TV channel specialized in awesome shit that goes viral,” the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BlLX03OJRU&feature=youtu.be&ref=hyperallergic.com) released this week is one of those tricks where somebody replaces something common with something highbrow and then records people’s reactions. (The same group once served McDonald’s [as organic food](http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/23/mcdonald%5Fs%5Forganic%5Fprank%5Ffor%5Ffoodies%5Ftwo%5Fdutch%5Fpranksters%5Fplay%5Ftrick%5Fat.html?ref=hyperallergic.com).) It’s highly silly but revealing in how, when you ask people about art, the context propels the same generic, meaningless rambling of artspeak.

In the video, a man named Boris Lange — dressed in a snazzy vest handy for hooking his Warby Parker–esque glasses onto — presents one of Ikea’s [new street art products](http://www.ikea.com/ms/en%5FAU/coming-soon/art-event/index.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) as the work of a supposedly famous Swedish artist named Ike Andrews (don’t kill me; I’m just the messenger here). One viewer responds that “it’s modern, it’s shocking” and “you can clearly see that it concerns a form of symbolism.” Another values it at €2.5 million. At the end, when Lange reveals that it’s from Ikea, everyone shares jollily in the joke, aside from a couple of people who look like they wanted to punch a few [Lack](http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/series/09063/?ref=hyperallergic.com) tables.

Oddly the real creators of the piece — [Nevercrew](http://www.ikea.com/au/en/catalog/categories/tools/artevent%5Fstreet%5Fartists/?ref=hyperallergic.com#nevercrew), aka Swiss artists Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni — are never given credit for their illustration of a whale breaking out of a bottle in a steampunk style, which one museumgoer digs into some free associating to characterize as having “nostalgic attributes.”