Curator Gifts

Modern art: I call it Procrastination.

"This is the show, Madam."

"He was such a great artist, yet in his own lifetime he never sold a single mug."

They're museum quality!"

Picasso Jigsaw: There may be more than one solution.

Museum of Commerce and gift shop.

"Of course, it's a very early Rembrandt."

'Brilliant! I love it! I'll give you ?25,000!'

'And exactly where did you find the 'antique salami slicer'?'

'He really captured her in this one.'

Sold! For £42,000 to the... No wait - it's the wrong way round!

Muriel's over-curated life

'...And here's one of the artist's earliest paintings.'

'And here, the artist is clearly making an ironic statement about the fleeting nature of material possessions.'

The Pope admiring the Sistine Chapel: 'It needs a caption.'

Euro on the exhibition.

'At first glance, my work may seem heavily ironic, but, culturally adjusted, it's really pretty sincere!'

'This painting was purchased on a whim by our ex-curator of drawings and paintings.'

A man in an art gallery stands in front of a blank canvas that has a suggestion box below it.

'It's fabulous! I'll give you ?25,000 for it!'

Understanding art.

'Art overload - even this is beginning to llke like kitsch.'

Scared sheep visiting a Damien Hirst exhibition.

"It's a stunning example of the absence of traditional art as a paradigm of a new way of viewing the essence of a new zeitgeist..." "Er...do you think we should tell him that we haven't hung the picture yet?"

'Thank goodness next week we'll be in a new dynasty and we can make some other style of pottery.'

'Abstract art is supposed to look that way.' (A rather smarthy attitude in an art gallery)

'This painting's in very poor taste.' 'Yes. It's from his sour grapes period.'

"This artist is a deeply religious feminist and anti-smoking advocate, who made a lot of money in the computer industry before going off to paint in Paris, where she now lives with her husband and two little girls."

"Wow, Grog, fire and drawings. This is quite an entertainment center you have here."

One Week Only! The 100 Greatest Paintings of All Time!

After three days the curator decided it was probably upside down.

'I suspect, Madam, that this Van Gogh is a forgery.'

The Masters' Early Works.

'It looks messy but it has a certain cachet.'

Artist Retrospective.