Banksy vs The Bristol Museum

If you haven’t heard of Banksy before, he’s an anonymous UK based grafitti artist who makes politically charged graffiti artwork around the world. I heard a story one time about him while he was in Isreal. Banksy was in a cab with his gear and asked a cab driver to go to the Palestinian wall. Somehow it came up that he wanted to spray paint on it, and the cab driver told him “no worries man, it’s Sunday and the guards take the day off”. After dropping him off Banksy did 9 pieces of work on the wall (some pictured below) and came back to the cab driver who was laughing his ass off, obviously the Israeli’s don’t take a day off from pointing their guns at the other side. Somehow he had managed to do his thing and get away with it, again. Whether this is true or not it certainly leads to his legend…

I don’t know how he gets away with some of his more creative work, but I’m sure it involves an official looking reflective jacket and perhaps a flashing orange construction light on top of a car. This time though he contacted the Bristol Museum (being his home town) to do an art project inside the museum, and after much bickering about the idea between the head CEO’s and the normal staff the project was allowed, by Bansky terms. He was allowed full access to the museum at night with only a select few members from the museum to see what he was doing.

Longest Line Ever!

The result was nothing anyone would imagine. From the opening day for 3 months straight the line was at least 3 hours long and people traveled to Bristol from all other world to see the exhibit, including us! Our busy European schedule only allowed us 1 day to see Bristol and this exhibit took up that entire day, even though the extra travel and the 4 hour-long line was worth it. Banksy vs. Bristol Museum is the best exhibit we have seen in a museum. Who knew an illegal graffiti artist could accomplish so much. As we stood for hours in that line we often wondered if he was watching his success from afar or disguised as a museum employee since no one knows his identity.

Below is some of the most thought provoking artwork we’ve seen in a museum. You can view the slideshow below fullscreen by pressing the box in the right hand corner!