Sure, I could post some poetry today or a quote, but instead I’ll hereby declare this Friday (and maybe all coming Fridays should I remember this) to be “Throw Out That Art! Day” (I can’t tell whether this is incredibly highbrow or amazingly lowbrow), starting with a smattering of stories I just found here: Chris Evans, the BBC Radio Two disc jockey, has accidentally thrown out a piece of artwork by Damien Hirst, and not just any piece, but one of his own: “Evans, 42, made the admission on his evening drive- time show, saying the print - worth thousands of pounds - was now lying in a charity shop waiting to be bought for a fraction of its true value. […] However, he did not seem to be worried about the potentially costly mistake, telling the story in fits of laughter.”

Somewhat older: “A storage firm face[d] a £350,000 legal bill after they lost a valuable work of art by a Turner Prize winner. The sculpture by Anish Kapoor was probably thrown in a skip by mistake during building work at the offices of Fine Art Logistics Ltd, according to a judge at the High Court. […] The judge held that the work was probably destroyed at a waste transfer station.” (story)

And this sounds like one of those urban myths, but it isn’t: “A bag of rubbish that was part of a Tate Britain work of art has been accidentally thrown away by a cleaner. The bag filled with discarded paper and cardboard was part of a work by Gustav Metzger, said to demonstrate the ‘finite existence’ of art.” (story) Incidentally, this story also comes up on top when you google the story about Joseph Beuys and the cleaning (and thus destruction) of one of his pieces of art.