Banksy

Wooster Collective reports...

1. is this the first time you've installed works of your own in new york museums?
In New York, yes. Before this my paintings have only been exhibited in the Tate gallery in London and the Louvre in Paris. Then they took them down.

2. why did you choose the four you chose?
I went for the biggest four museums in New York, I wanted to do the Guggenheim but there weren't enough paintings in it, I would have had to appear between two Picasso's and I'm not good enough to get away with that.

3. were the works you installed all paintings on canvas?
Two of the works were fine oil paintings. I vandalised them so they had some actual meaning. In the Natural History museum I installed a real dead beetle but with model missiles and satellite dishes stuck to it. A bug in the true American spirit.

4. how did you attach them to the wall?
I was careful to attach them in a way they wouldn't fall down by themselves.

5. what message, if any, were you trying to convey by putting up these works?
I've wandered round a lot of art galleries thinking 'I could have done that' so it seemed only right that I should try.

These Galleries are just trophy cabinets for a handful of millionaires. The public never has any real say in what art they see. Its good to screw with the selection process sometimes. 'Comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable' as Eleanor Roosevelt once said.

The gas mask painting is about how fear of terror is disfiguring society.

The military officer painting is dedicated to all those who joined the forces to fight honorable and just wars, and ended up feeling like maybe they should have stayed home and been peace activists instead.

6. how did you put up the works without being noticed by guards or other visitors? was it easy?
As a graffiti artist its harder to paint subway trains in New York these days than it is to paint your major public exhibition spaces. You just have to glue on a fake beard and move with the times.

7. How did you manage to get the paintings into the museums?
After reading 3 biographies on Harry Houdini