MoMA cut ties with happycorp after ECD/founder Doug Jaeger (kind of) admitted to enabling ad renegade Poster Boy to “vandalize” one of its subway print installations.
Well, that’s not really all. He also hired a photographer to shoot him in front of them and expressed his interest in selling said photos.
MoMA’s since shafted the agency and replaced the images. Too bad; we dug the final results. See Defaced Marilyn and Oil Spill Monet.
The blogosphere has it that Jaeger hired Poster Boy to deface the posters, which makes it all the worse that he plays the clueless card and spouts haltingly profound ditties like, “But if someone who is getting acclaim as an artist does something to your campaign, does it make it less valuable or more valuable?”
We like to think Jaeger could’ve gotten MoMA to support the appropriated art if he weren’t so damn cocky, and maybe if he let them in on his plans in the first place. Of course we could be totally wrong. Anyway, now we’ll never know.
For its part, MoMA put a hand to its own palpitating heart and stated, “The museum deplores any kind of vandalism and is profoundly distressed* that the posters were defaced.”
Bleh. We love what’s in you, MoMA, but frankly, we’ve seen all that stuff before. And this isn’t to say we agree with what Jaeger did, but we do think the mashups were fresh and exciting: new artists paying tribute to the spirit of old ones. That’s modern, right?
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*We hate it when companies use phrases like this. It’s so fake.
