Art meets Pokémon: a look back at the collaboration at the Van Gogh Museum

September 2023 will go down in the annals of Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum as the month when an anniversary collaboration with the Pokémon Company went haywire. The partnership, celebrating the museum’s 50th anniversary, aimed to merge Van Gogh’s classic art with the colorful, playful world of Pokémon. However, a seemingly innocuous decision set off a series of unexpected events.

The Concept and the Drama

The exhibit, which featured Pokémon artwork inspired by Van Gogh, attracted people from all over the world. However, the fundamental mistake was to tie participation to a limited-edition Pokémon card, featuring Pikachu in a gray felt hat, inspired by Van Gogh's Self-Portrait. This card became the bone of contention, drawing scalpers like moths to a flame.

From the moment it opened, the exhibition turned into a battlefield where unscrupulous individuals fought over these cards, fueling a parallel market on the Internet with exorbitant prices. The museum responded by stopping the distribution of the cards, but calm has not returned.

The Coup de Théâtre

A new twist has been revealed by Dutch newspaper Het Parool, reporting the suspension of four employees of the Van Gogh Museum in connection with the Pokémon exhibition. The suspensions, which came in mid-December, were motivated by suspicions of card theft and code of conduct violations.

One employee is accused of stealing an entire box of Pokémon cards, while a 25-year veteran allegedly failed to follow procedures when informing colleagues of appropriate times to obtain tickets and cards. The museum confirmed the incidents, noting that it was an issue involving "a number of operational staff," including security guards and cashiers.

Thoughts on the Incident

This collaboration between the Van Gogh Museum and Pokémon, born of good intentions, quickly degenerated into a logistical and ethical nightmare. The images of the September frenzy are more reminiscent of riots than a celebration of an artistic collaboration. It is hard to fault the museum for not anticipating the magnitude of the public reaction, but it raises deeper questions about the security and management of events of this magnitude, especially when the price of a Pokémon trading card, distributed in a limited quantity, increases prodigiously and the "scalpers" have only one goal: to collect as many copies as possible to resell them at exorbitant prices.