This time, the museum’s management decided not to joke about it and officially filed a police complaint for theft against unknown individuals. The banana, notably, was quickly replaced with a fresh one.

“Last time, at least they ate it”: why the museum went to the police

This is far from the first time Comedian has been “attacked.” Since the artwork involves a perishable fruit, museum staff are required to replace the banana every three days to keep the installation in display condition. However, previous incidents were purely gastronomic in nature:

• In July last year, a visitor at the same museum simply peeled the banana off the wall and ate it. Security quickly intervened and replaced it. Cattelan later joked that he was only disappointed the hungry guest “ate only the banana and left the tape untouched.” No legal action was taken.
• In 2019, at Art Basel in Miami, performance artist David Datuna also publicly ate the banana off the wall, claiming he was “just hungry.”

So why did the museum go to the police this time? The institution explained that the perpetrator escaped unnoticed.

“Since the offender has not been identified, we have no possibility for dialogue. This is happening for the second time, and for us it is a matter of respect for the artwork,” the Centre Pompidou-Metz stated.

A fruit worth its weight in gold

When Comedian first debuted in Miami in 2019, Cattelan priced it at $120,000, sparking heated debates about the value of contemporary art. Since then, the banana-and-duct-tape piece has skyrocketed in value.

In 2024, Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun purchased one version of the installation for a staggering $5.2 million. A few days later, following tradition, Sun ceremoniously ate the banana at a press conference in Hong Kong.

Trump’s gold toilet and Churchill’s estate theft

Maurizio Cattelan has long been known as one of the art world’s greatest provocateurs. Beyond the infamous banana, he created a fully functional toilet made of 18-karat gold titled America. At one point, he even offered the piece to Donald Trump during his first presidential term at the White House.

The toilet’s fate proved even more tragic than the banana’s. In 2020, it was stolen from an exhibition at Blenheim Palace in the UK—the ancestral home of Winston Churchill. In March of this year, a British court found two men guilty of the theft. It turned out the gold masterpiece, worth several million dollars, had been brutally dismantled and melted down, with police unable to recover a single gram of the precious metal.