Went to the Museum of Modern Art in Fort Worth. Among the exhibitions, it had one room dedicated to about 40 images shot at one time of a sunset. BFD. Camera sat there and shot the same image, printed, no frame. Another was two 3’x3’ plywood boards nailed together with a 2x4 coming off to brace it. They called that art.
I just embarrassed the wife by just breaking up laughing at what they were exhibiting.
My mom is a professional artist. She had a good friend who entered a juried art competition and the winner of that year’s exhibit was a black Hefty bag. She was so utterly disgusted that she dried out a cow patty, covered it with laquer, nailed it to a plank of wood, and entered it the following year in protest. Ha!
My ex-wife and I were at the Denver Art Museum touring around some years ago...we entered this one gallery room where, in the middle of it was an enormous (about 15-feet in circumference) ashtray, yes, with lots of cigarette butts etc. in it, with lots of people standing around looking into it, like it was part of the exhibit! It was hilarious and, even more so when we went to leave this particular room there was a small sign near the door, ‘Smoking Area’...I never laughed so hard.