{"id":472456,"date":"2026-06-02T14:19:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:19:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/472456\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T14:19:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T14:19:21","slug":"famous-fruit-stolen-again-from-6-2m-artwork-why-the-thief-is-getting-away-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/472456\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous fruit stolen again from $6.2M artwork \u2014 why the thief is getting away with it"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was\u00a0ripe\u00a0for the picking.<\/p>\n

Banana bandits scored a sweet steal worth a whopping $6.2 million, nabbing the yellow, crescent-shaped centerpiece of \u201cComedian,\u201d a masterpiece by Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan, from the\u00a0Centre Pompidou-Metz museum in France this weekend.<\/p>\n

The fruity theft comes just one year after a gallery visitor was discovered eating the banana that previously starred in the masterwork.<\/p>\n

\"Visual<\/p>\n

Visual artist Maurizio Cattelan\u2019s \u201cComedian\u201d was defiled Saturday, according to the Centre Pompidou-Metz museum in France Stefano Giovannini<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a feast for the eyes \u2014 and the sticky fingers.<\/p>\n

A guard for the Centre Pompidou-Metz noticed the banana, crudely affixed to the museum wall with a slice of silvery duct tape as a work of conceptual art, had disappeared Saturday.<\/p>\n

The museum alerted the police, filed a criminal lawsuit, and restored the installation \u2014 meaning they replaced the bauble with, you guessed it, another banana.<\/p>\n

Because unlike, say, $100,000 worth of jewels,<\/a> it\u2019s that easily replaced.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo irreversible damage has been noticed,\u201d reps for Pompidou-Metz said in a statement, per the UK Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The artwork graced the paper\u2019s front cover after it sold for $120,000.<\/p>\n

The starchy snack has been swapped out several times since its December 2019 debut at Art Basel in Miami Beach, Florida, where it\u00a0sold for a jaw-dropping $120,000<\/a>. But Cattelan\u00a0purchased the original banana<\/a>\u00a0for 35 cents from a 74-year-old fruit vendor in the Big Apple.<\/p>\n

The appetizing\u00a0pi\u00e8ce de r\u00e9sistance,\u00a0however,\u00a0has\u00a0met an unfortunate end on several occasions, thanks to hungry art lovers, including Noh Huyn-soo, who couldn\u2019t resist\u00a0sinking his teeth into the treat\u00a0<\/a>when it was on display at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea, in 2023.<\/p>\n

Justin Sun, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency mogul, too, chewed up the banana after purchasing Comedian for $6.2 million at an auction at\u00a0Sotheby\u2019s the following year.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The perishable piece of art has been replaced several times over the past few years, thanks to hungry art gluttons. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Cattelan replicated the mouth-watering masterwork for Centre-Pompidou Metz in May 2025, only for it\u00a0to be gobbled up<\/a>\u00a0by a visitor on July 12.<\/p>\n

Its allure is so bananas that even The Post succumbed to its appeal,\u00a0recreating the creation<\/a>\u00a0with an 80-cent bodega banana and a $4.95 spool of heavy-duty duct tape in less than 60 seconds.<\/p>\n

And our readers truly ate it up.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was\u00a0ripe\u00a0for the picking. Banana bandits scored a sweet steal worth a whopping $6.2 million, nabbing the yellow,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[437,434,435,436,219614,86458,438,146,85,46,83535,219615],"class_list":["post-472456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-centre-pompidou-metz","tag-conceptual-art","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-maurizio-cattelan","tag-visual-artist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}