Divisive royal portraits and a $6.2-million banana: 2024’s biggest art controversies

Big money, big ideas and big egos — the art world has all the necessary ingredients for a juicy controversy.

This may be why eye-rolling and schadenfreude emerge so virulently whenever said controversies occur. After all, as the American painter Ad Reinhardt once quipped: “Art is too serious to be taken seriously.”

The year in art included plenty of snark over new depictions of the British royal family that were perceived as too aggressive or too generic, as well as an infamous banana that returned to auction with a shocking hammer price. Works were accidentally thrown out, smashed or intentionally forged; and legal dramas unfolded thanks to badly behaved dealers and museum-targeting protestors.

Here are 13 of the controversies that entertained, shook and shaped the art world in 2024:

For some, the line between modern art and trash is vanishingly thin. Among them was the elevator technician at a Dutch museum who mistakenly threw away part of an artwork that had been made to resemble two empty beer cans.

According to LAM Museum, in the Netherlands, the hand-painted work (titled “All the good times we spent together”) symbolized French artist Alexandre Lavet’s “cherished memories shared with dear friends.” The museum also said, in a statement, that it bore “no ill will” towards the technician — after all, the replica cans had intentionally been displayed in a glass elevator shaft as though they’d been left behind by construction workers.

The items were later recovered intact from a trash bag before being cleaned and returned to display.

The vandalization of cultural heritage in the name of protest, by Just Stop Oil and other activist groups, continued apace. The Magna Carta, the “Mona Lisa” and Stonehenge were among the targets in 2024.

But this was also a year of differing fortunes for the assailants. In the Netherlands, three Belgian climate activists who targeted Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” escaped unpunished, after an appeals court overturned their two-month prison sentences. (They spent 23 days in detention). In September, however, a British judge handed the two young demonstrators who attacked Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” with tomato soup long custodial sentences of two years, and 20 months, respectively.

Whether this will serve as a deterrent remains to be seen. Some museums aren’t taking any chances: London’s National Gallery, the target of several attacks in recent years, was among the institutions to step up their security by restricting liquids and large bags.

Anyone outraged that a banana duct-taped to a wall sold for $120,000 in 2019 was in for a shock this year. In November, an edition of Maurizio Cattelan’s controversial artwork “Comedian” — which made headlines around the world when it first sold for six figures — reemerged at auction with an estimate of $1 million to $1.5 million.

The valuation proved to be conservative: After a bidding battle, Chinese billionaire Justin Sun paid $6.2 million for the viral work. For his money, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur received a roll of duct tape and one banana (not the original), as well as a certificate of authenticity and installation instructions. Sun also enjoyed a brief moment in the spotlight after he called a press conference in Hong Kong and promptly ate the banana for the cameras.

“I want to eat it to become part of the (artwork’s) history,” he told CNN.

In January, a Japanese author admitted that her award-winning book, “The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy,” had been written with the help of ChatGPT. Shortly after receiving the Akutagawa Prize, Rie Kudan revealed that around 5% of the work was generated, word-for-word, by AI.

“I plan to continue to profit from the use of AI in the writing of my novels, while letting my creativity express itself to the fullest,” the author told a press conference.

Kudan’s admission stoked ongoing existential questions about the threat AI poses to the creative industries. But in June, photographer Miles Astray got revenge for team human by sneaking his very real photo of a flamingo into the AI category of the 1839 Awards’ Color Photography Contest — and winning the competition’s People’s Vote award. He wrote in an Instagram post that he’d wanted to “prove that human-made content has not lost its relevance” and that “Mother Nature and her human interpreters can still beat the machine.”

There was plenty of sympathy for the 4-year-old boy who accidentally smashed a Bronze Age jar at an Israeli archeological museum — not least because the artifact, which experts say was at least 3,500 years old, had been put on display without a glass case.

The Hecht Museum in Haifa defended its decision to present the object without protective glass, saying that its founder emphasized the importance of making history accessible to the public. The museum also welcomed the boy and his parents back for a special tour.

Curators at Palazzo Fava in Italy, however, were somewhat less understanding toward the man who shattered a porcelain sculpture by dissident artist Ai Weiwei. CCTV footage showed him aggressively pushing the sculpture over and then holding a piece of it above his head.

The Chinese artist, who heard the smashing noise from an adjacent room, described the man’s actions as “unacceptable,” telling the Art Newspaper: “Such acts not only undermine the museum’s role as a public space but also pose potential physical threats, beyond merely damaging the meaning an artwork carries.”

A small town in Wales welcomed an unexpected visitor in June: a large, pink, inflatable man on all fours. But the 43-foot-tall sculpture — a laughing self-portrait of the Chinese contemporary artist Yue Minjun — divided opinion in Ruthin, where it was displayed on the front lawn of a local school.

The school’s principal Frances King told CNN that Yue’s work has a “deep philosophical understanding” but admitted there had been “mixed responses.” Locals spoken to by CNN meanwhile described the inflatable man as everything from “absolutely wonderful” to “a bit odd.”

Perhaps most importantly, though, the students “love it” King said, adding that the children were “really quite fond” of the installation.

The British royal family has continued to overhaul its public image in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death. But her son King Charles III’s first official portrait since his coronation might not have been what they had in mind.

On social media, the aggressively red 8.5- by 6.5-foot painting was variously described as the “visual representation of the massacre cause by colonizers” and looking “like he’s going straight to hell.” Others were more sympathetic, with art historian Richard Morris saying the “really liked” British artist Jonathan Yeo’s portrait, writing on X that before photography, to have a great painter “capture your real appearance you accepted the revelation of your flaws and your mortality.”

A more reserved portrait of Catherine, Princess of Wales that appeared on the cover of Tatler proved similarly divisive. Alastair Sooke, chief art critic at British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, wrote that the painting by artist Hannah Uzor was “intolerably bad” and “shows no flicker of resemblance to its subject.” And in Northern Ireland, a new sculpture by Anto Brennan paying tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip (and two of their corgis) also raised eyebrows.

In October, Manhattan-based art advisor Lisa Schiff pled guilty to wire fraud and agreed to forfeit the $6.5 million she was accused of making through the sale of (or, in some cases, the failure to buy) 55 artworks.

According to the US Department of Justice, Schiff defrauded at least 12 clients — including art collectors, an artist, the estate of another artist and a gallery — by not disclosing that their art had sold, or by not purchasing works they had paid for. She used the funds for business and personal expenses, in what authorities called “half a decade of deceit.” Schiff will be sentenced in January.

This year also marked the release of disgraced art dealer Inigo Philbrick, four years into his seven-year prison sentence — also for wire fraud. Philbrick’s $86-million scheme, the largest art fraud in American history, saw him fake documents, conceal ownership interests and invent a fictional art collector as he collateralized and resold shares in blue-chip contemporary art.

A women-only art space exploring themes of misogyny was at center of two controversies this year: a discrimination ruling, after a disgruntled man was denied entry, and the discovery that three of the exhibit’s “Picassos” had been forged by the museum’s curator.

The Ladies Lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia had been open for four years when, following a visitor complaint, a local tribunal ordered it to stop refusing entry to “persons who do not identify as ladies.” The artist and curator behind the installation, Kirsha Kaechele, opted to close the space rather than allow men in, instead moving three of the exhibit’s Picasso artworks to a women’s restroom.

The plot thickened when Kaechele admitted that she had forged the three works herself because she wanted them to match the original space’s color scheme and green silk curtains. Then, in September, the Supreme Court of Tasmania overturned the discrimination ruling and the Ladies Lounge reopened in December — though, this time, a limited number of tickets were made available to men (via ballot and only on certain days) for “domestic arts lessons and other reparations,” the museum said.

A German museum worker was fired after hanging his own art on the gallery’s walls. The 51-year-old exhibition technician, a self-proclaimed “freelance artist,” smuggled one of his paintings into Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne out of hours, according to German tabloid Süddeutsche Zeitung and German police.

It is not known how long the painting hung on the wall before security realized, but a museum spokesperson said it was likely not there for long. The man later emailed his employer confessing his actions and was promptly fired, reported to the police and banned from the museum.

Chinese artist duo the Gao Brothers were known for, among other things, provocative sculptures of Mao Zedong — in a country notoriously sensitive about its former ruler’s legacy. But that was well over a decade ago, during a relatively liberal era for artistic expression.

In September, 68-year-old Gao Zhen was detained by Chinese authorities, according to his brother and artistic partner, Gao Qiang. The US-based artist told CNN that police raided his brother’s art studio on the outskirts of Beijing on suspicion of slandering China’s “heroes and martyrs,” an offense punishable by up to three years in prison.

The public security bureau that Gao Qiang accused of detaining his brother, in Hebei province’s Sanhe city, declined to comment to CNN at the time. Gao Zhen remains in detention, according to regular updates made to the duo’s Facebook page.

The London play “The Years” was temporarily paused after audience members reported feeling unwell during a graphic scene depicting an abortion. Staff at the Almeida Theatre were forced to briefly stop in late July, with multiple audience members requiring assistance.

A spokeswoman for the Almeida confirmed the episode in an email to CNN at the time, but said that “all audience members were quick to recover after brief assistance.”

Despite the ongoing drip of Nazi-looted artworks being returned to their rightful owners (or their descendants), 2024 was a frustrating year for many of the affected families. In March, the World Jewish Restitution Organization published a report saying over half the countries that signed the Washington Conference Principles — rules guiding the restitution of art confiscated by the Nazis in Germany before or during World War II — had made “little or no progress.”

Among the most controversial cases was that of Camille Pissarro’s “Rue Saint Honore, apres midi, effet de pluie”. In 1939, the member of a prominent Jewish family was forced to sell the painting to obtain a visa and flee Germany, and many decades later it ended up in the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid. In January, almost two years after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of the woman’s family, an appeals court judge said that although Spain should have voluntarily relinquished the painting, it was not legally required to do so, according to Reuters.

There were, however, a handful of victories. In October, Claude Monet’s long-lost “Bord de Mer” was returned to the descendants of its original owners after the pastel work was listed for sale by Louisiana art dealer, prompting an FBI investigation.

CNN’s Jack Guy, Jacqui Palumbo, Nectar Gan, Stephy Chung, Christy Choi, Kathleen Magramo, Lianne Kolirin, Billy Stockwell, Francesca Annio, Manveena Suri, Hannah Rabinowitz, Emily Blumenthal, Tierney Sneed, Chris Stern, Louis Mian and Catherine Nicholls contributed reporting to these stories.