Is This Actually Art?

A museum in the Netherlands recently covered a gallery floor with 800 pounds of peanut butter. The piece, by Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers, is designed to make people stop and wonder whether it’s actually art. Artists like Schippers challenge the idea that art has to be beautiful or make sense, since sometimes the reaction an artwork creates is the art itself.

Your Task
A museum gives you an empty room. Create an idea for artwork using one ordinary object or material in a completely unexpected way, like hundreds of sticky notes, thousands of shoelaces, or a mountain of cereal boxes.

Your Concept: what would visitors see when they walked in, why did you choose that object or material, what reaction do you want (laughter, confusion, surprise, curiosity, something else), and what would you title it?

Defend It: someone looks at your creation and says, “That’s not art!” What’s your response?

Your goal isn’t to make something beautiful. It’s to make people stop, react, and think.

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