{"id":104456,"date":"2025-08-29T02:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104456\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T02:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T02:28:08","slug":"london-museum-secures-banksys-piranhas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/104456\/","title":{"rendered":"London Museum Secures Banksy\u2019s\u00a0Piranhas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/t\/banksy\/\" id=\"auto-tag_banksy\" data-tag=\"banksy\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Banksy<\/a> that startled London last summer has been packed away until its next act: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/banksys-piranha-police-sentry-box-donated-to-the-new-london-museum-1234732454\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a starring role in the London Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe work,\u00a0which features a fish tank full of Piranhas, appeared overnight on August 11, 2024, as one of nine animal-themed interventions the artist <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/list\/art-news\/artists\/banksy-animals-london-artworks-ranked-1234714648\/the-fish\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">installed <\/a>across the capital over nine consecutive days. Painted on the windows of a police sentry box in the financial district, the mural transformed the booth into a fish tank. Looking closer, though, viewers would find that fish aren\u2019t harmless\u2014they\u2019re piranhas with serrated teeth. Critics suggested the piece alluded to Damien Hirst\u2019s pickled shark, repositioned here as a comment on surveillance and policing.<\/p>\n<p>\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-lazy-image__img lrv-u-background-color-grey-lightest lrv-u-width-100p lrv-u-display-block lrv-u-height-auto\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1164349860.jpg\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-1164349860.jpg\" alt=\"A mural by British street artist Banksy, of a child holding a pink flare, is pictured on August 27, 2019 on a building in Venice. (Photo by Vincenzo PINTO \/ AFP) \/ RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION        (Photo credit should read VINCENZO PINTO\/AFP via Getty Images)\" data-lazy- data-lazy- height=\"\" width=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe City of London Corporation quickly removed the booth, according to the <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/cx2qz89nk11o\" target=\"_blank\">BBC<\/a>, first putting it on display at Guildhall Yard before transferring it into storage. It will resurface in 2026 at the London Museum\u2019s new Smithfield home, part of a $280 million relocation project expected to draw two million visitors a year. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\t\u201cOur collection now spans from Roman graffiti to Banksy,\u201d head of curatorial Glyn Davies told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tPiranhas\u00a0was also the consensus favorite among Banksy-watchers, and ranked first in a series that included monkeys swinging from a bridge, elephants peering from Chelsea windows, and a rhinoceros mounting a Nissan Micra, it stood out for its color, placement, and layered allusions. Kelly Grovier, author of a forthcoming book on the artist, called it \u201ca ghostly shoal of ghoulish piranhas\u201d that \u201crehabilitates\u201d Hirst\u2019s now-blunted shark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe wider series briefly turned London into a zoological guessing game. Each morning in August, Instagram users speculated on the meaning of the latest apparition: a wolf howling from a satellite dish, pelicans looting a fish shop sign, a goat poised precariously over Kew Bridge. Half the fun was conjecture, while the other half was seeing how long the works survived before vandals, rival taggers, or local authorities intervened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Banksy that startled London last summer has been packed away until its next act: a starring role&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[76,354,355,19774,49,48,356,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-104456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-banksy","12":"tag-ca","13":"tag-canada","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}