Pair of glasses left on museum floor gets mistaken for art by visitors

Modern art has often been poked fun at for being too obscure and to some critics even – meaningless. A recent incident in which several visitors were fooled into believing that a pair of glasses left on the floor of a museum was ‘artwork’ is the latest prank to go viral. 17-year-old TJ Khayatan came up with the idea to prove the point that people will try to artistically interpret anything if it’s in a gallery setting. He later posted pictures of the funny moment on Twitter on 24th May, which was then retweeted over 45,000.

“Upon first arrival we were quite impressed with the artwork and paintings presented in the huge facility,” TJ Khayatan told Buzzfeed. But there were some ‘art pieces’ – like a stuffed animal on a grey blanket – that didn’t quite make any sense to him and friends. He then decided to place a pair of glasses on the floor and walked away to see if people would fall for his joke.

Merely seconds later, people started to surround them while maintaining a safe distance from the ‘artwork’. Many even clicked pictures. However even after successfully pulling off the joke, the teenager has an interesting explanation for why people fell for it. “I like to think they imagined the floored glasses to represent the dumbing down of culture, or perhaps the viewing of life through a lens, possibly with a nice, lower-case title like 'myopia' or 'real eyes (real lies)',” he says.