One of These Things Does Not Belong: Banksy Strikes at the British Museum

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Now he's brought his work indoors, again. Tate Britain, the Natural History Museum and major galleries in New York have already fallen prey to Banksy's pranks. Now he can add the British Museum to his roster.

The museum took days to notice that Early Man Goes to Market, a rock with a drawing of a stick figure pushing a shopping cart, was not in fact an authentic piece of cave art. It was an authentic piece of street art, however, and its presence was only illuminated by the artist announcing via the internet that the piece was somewhere in the museum.

Banksy announced a treasure hunt, and said that the first person to snap a picture of themselves with the piece would win an original Banksy picture of a shopping cart. Once officials at the British Museum heard about the faux drawing, they found "Early Man" quickly. But, as Banksy wrote on his site, it had "remained in the collection for quite some time."

Now that its origins have been illuminated, British women can no longer use Early Man Goes to Market to show their husbands that men have been managing the shopping list for as long as they have been hunting bison.

FOR MORE INFO:

The Telegraph: "Origin of new British Museum exhibit looks a bit wobbly"

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