Many people consider museums to be about art and not about commerce. The merchandising tendencies of the museum shops in New York, for example, is above all considered a lesson in how not to proceed, even though it does generate income to further finance the museum. Art has a message, a vocation, and if we start transacting business there it will lose its power of expression.
Ideas like these seem exotically remote when you walk through the ‘Museum Shop’ of Meschac Gaba’s the ‘Museum of Contemporary African Art’, where this work was presented. The floating shop sells small works of art, most of them by young European artists. The moderately priced limited editions breathed an unhurried and pleasant atmosphere. This atmosphere is however disrupted by the concept of money; capitalism and consumerism cannot be stopped. Meschac Gaba thus provided an opportunity of reflection on the concept of money and everything connected.