September 2023 offered a primary instance of why we won’t have good issues, as an anniversary collaboration between Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum and the Pokémon Firm descended into scalper-fuelled chaos. The occasion was meant to rejoice the museum’s fiftieth anniversary and featured Van Gogh-inspired artwork of Pokémon by key collection artists: however the large mistake was that attendance got here with a limited-edition Pokémon card.
As quickly because the exhibition opened, it was flooded by unscrupulous people trying to get as many playing cards as they may, and promote them on-line at an enormous mark-up. The cardboard in query is Pikachu with Gray Felt Hat, impressed by Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Gray Felt Hat, and at present goes on eBay for something between $100-350. Simply over two weeks after opening, the Van Gogh museum threw its arms up, and stopped distributing the playing cards solely.
The exhibition however continued as scheduled till its deadline on January 7, 2024. And now one additional twist, first reported by the Dutch paper Het Parool, is that 4 workers of the Van Gogh museum had been suspended in relation to the Pokémon exhibition in mid-December, particularly on suspicions of stealing playing cards and breaking the code of conduct.
One of many employees is accused of stealing a field of the Pokémon playing cards. One other, who had apparently been employed for 25 years, is claimed to have didn’t comply with “procedures and codes of conduct” by informing others on the most effective occasions to safe tickets and when the playing cards could be accessible.
The Van Gogh museum confirmed to Het Parool that it was coping with incidents regarding “quite a few workers from operational providers”, which incorporates safety guards and cashiers. The museum didn’t formally verify what number of workers are concerned, although the paper reviews 4 based mostly on museum sources, and a Van Gogh spokesperson declared with some understatement that “we emphasize that we view this as an incident.” The spokesperson went on to say that none are anticipated to return to work on the museum.
Effectively, I suppose that’ll educate an excellent cultural establishment what occurs while you check out a partnership with arguably the world’s largest gaming and leisure model. The extremes of Pokémon fandom have at all times been wild, however the cash concerned within the buying and selling card aspect of issues meant this wasn’t about Pokémon followers a lot as hustlers and scalpers, who all noticed a smooth goal and straightforward gross sales. Little doubt some did very effectively.
The Van Gogh museum can hardly be blamed for failing to foresee the out-of-control public response to its providing a Pokémon card, with a few of these September scenes virtually resembling riots. The entire story has been one in every of good intentions slamming crash-bang right into a extra cynical actuality, and that ought to make us all somewhat unhappy. In spite of everything, it does not imply they will assume extra rigorously about safety subsequent time. It simply signifies that, subsequent time, museums on this scale will simply do one thing that is far much less trouble.