An art collective has hacked into the controversial Bührle Collection exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich museum. It replaced written information accessible to visitors by QR code with critical comments about the provenance of the works on display.
Four QR codes were manipulated, said museum spokesman Björn Quellenberg, confirming a report on Tuesday by Swiss public radio, SRF.
These codes do not take readers to the provenance research carried out by the Bührle Foundation, but to the online site of the KKKK art collective, which hacked them. The hacking was discovered at the weekend.
For example, the pirated QR code for Cézanne’s “Boy in the Red Waistcoat” links to a commentary denouncing the fact that Emil Bührle profited twice from the Nazi regime: he made a fortune from his arms dealings with Nazi Germany and also took advantage of the distress of Jewish art collectors, persecuted by the Nazis, to build up his own collection.
Historians do not dispute this version of events. However, the Kunsthaus has never presented them so clearly.In addition to the Cézanne painting, KKKK lists four other paintings and their stories on its website. With the help of sources, the collective shows how these works came to be in the Bührle collection. It compares this research with the museum’s own communication via QR codes.
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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