"Why do you Suppose"

The text reads " Why do you suppose this piece is in your collection? Nina Karavasiles" It is not purchasable. It is placed in a collectors' home without their knowing it. It subverts the idea of willful acquisition. The bronze makes it too valuable to throw away. I have gone to great lengths to put it in peoples' collection and I swear there is Mission Impossible music playing in the background as I am placing them.

This crate is how I got the piece in the Patchett collection. I took a job doing some of the crate and shipping of a traveling exhibit of his collection leaving the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art and going to Mexico. I worked out this one one particular large crate housing mostly Joseph Beuys' work so that nothing would stay in place without this one little box. It would have to be included even if I was caught. In the mean time I was asked to include a very small Marcel Duchamp piece in another crate. I did, I documented it (standard practice). When the show moved to Mexico, they couldn't find the Duchamp but they could find the Karavasiles. They called my boss frantic that I had pulled a switch. I was startled, I was being accused of grand larceny of one of the demi-gods of art, this was never my intention. No, no my boss said. Keep looking. Yes the Duchamp was there, and so was the Karavasiles. Tom Patchett was reportedly amused.

For some reason I was really in a hurry --- charging! I looked up and immediately an object caught my attention. It was unfamiliar and I was taken aback. I had not seen it before and got excited. I read the inscription! I asked Dick about it and he insisted he knew nothing about it --repeatedly --- and was bemused by my excitement.

I had to leave; I had no time really to deal with it. When I returned that day, I thought about it, thought about it. I called Ellen -- she new nothing! however, she plaintively said, "Why didn't someone put it in my house?" I did not believe what anyone told me! Who did it? Who did it?

Finally, I also called Anna Quint; after hemming and hawing, she finally confessed Mark had put it there. I asked Mark when and where he had placed it at the house. Since it had been months since he had done it, he couldn't quite remember, but stated he had put it behind an "African Object". The sculpture was not hidden when I became aware of it. Either someone (Carmella) moved it or Mark had a memory loss, Or I was brain dead because I did not notice what was in my own house for what appears to have been several months. I tell this story with fondness of the memory, the 'shock" of unrecognition, the fun of it, the audacity of this 'guerrilla art attack' (a bit overstated), but I loved it!

Elvi