© 2026 Western New York Public Broadcasting Association

140 Lower Terrace St.
Buffalo, NY 14202

Toronto Address:
130 Queens Quay E.
Suite 903
Toronto, ON M5A 0P6


Mailing Address:
Horizons Plaza P.O. Box 1263
Buffalo, NY 14240-1263

Buffalo Toronto Public Media | Phone 716-845-7000
BTPM NPR Newsroom | Phone: 716-845-7040
Differing shades of blue wavering throughout the image
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

'Hang-and-Run' Artist Strikes NYC Museums

In a reverse-theft of sorts, a British artist has been sneaking his works into some of New York's top museums.

The artist, who goes by the name Banksy, has surreptitiously hung works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum.

A self-described "career graffiti writer" and "painter-decorator," Bansky tells Michele Norris that he consulted biographies of Harry Houdini to get ideas about how to sneak into the museums with his artworks, some of which are not small at all.

Asked why he carried out the pranks, Bansky says, simply: "I thought some of [the paintings] were quite good. That's why I thought, you know, put them in a gallery. Otherwise, they would just sit at home and no one would see them."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.