The art collective MSCHF secretly replaced an entire bathroom sink—the handles, water lines, and other parts—at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The latest stunt comes as museum security faces scrutiny for thefts across global institutions.
The heist was announced via an Instagram reel and first reported by Artnet News. In it, the disguised faces and voices discuss stealing a sink from the institution, with plans to replace it with better parts.
The piece, titled Met’s Sink of Theseus (2024), references the ancient thought experiment known as Ship of Theseus or Theseus’s Paradox, which considers whether replacing the entirety of an object’s parts creates a new object, or does the essence of the original remain.
The collective’s latest exhibition “Art 2” at Perrotin in Los Angeles showcases the reassembled sink with a clear plastic basin, as they didn’t steal the porcelain one.
The stunt-turned-art recalls the sometimes dubious nature of how artifacts from around the world are acquired by encyclopedic museum such as the Met. It also invoked the tradition of turning plumbing, sinks, and toilets into installations, the most famous of which is Marcel Duchamp’s first readymade, titled Fountain (1917) and consisting of a urinal turned on its side and signed by the artist.
MSCHF’s past stunts include the viral installation ATM Leaderboard (2022), presented by Perrotin at Art Basel Miami, in which a retrofitted ATM publicly displayed the account balance of participants. The collective also made headlines for creating a several controversial sneakers, including Lil Nas X’s famed Satan Shoes (a pair of Nikes filled with human blood), and a pair of Nike Air Jordan Max 97 sneakers complete with a drop of holy water from the Jordan river.
