The Art of Banksy exhibit displays the following quote from the infamous street artist on one wall: “Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” With ticket prices starting at $40 and skyrocketing to $70 on weekends, the latter half of this equation is certainly the target audience of the exhibit, which opened in Boston on February 17, 2022. Walking through the gallery space in Harvard Square, patrons are unlikely to feel uncomfortable in the way Banksy intended: the only disturbing thing about this exhibit is its blatant perversion of the anti-capitalist messages behind Banksy’s art.

The exhibit proudly declares itself to be “the world’s largest collection of privately owned Banksy art,” according to its website, which is quick to proclaim the price tag attached to such a collection: $35 million. It has traveled to a number of major cities around the world, and includes such prominent works as “Girl and Balloon,” “Flower Thrower,” and “Rude Copper,” along with some of Banksy’s lesser-known indoor pieces, jammed together in a moody, dimly-late maze of gallery rooms.

Banksy became active in the 1990s, and has maintained his anonymity ever since; this mystique, combined with the political and social commentary that accompanies his art—mainly works of street graffiti, his works have expanded to include re-worked paintings, screen-prints, performance exhibitions, films, and even a theme park—have made him a mainstay in both the art world and the public consciousness. Much of his body of work deals with critiquing capitalism and consumerism, with titles like “Barcodes,” “Cash Machine Girl,” “Morons,” and “Sorry the Lifestyle You Ordered is Currently Out of Stock” among them. The latter two examples deal directly with the commodification of art and the shallow nature of the market surrounding it. In 2018, he made headlines after shredding one of his most recognizable works, “Girl and Balloon,” just after it had sold at auction for $1.4 million.

It’s jarring to see the work of an artist known for his guerrilla installations and anti-establishment tendencies displayed in a gallery, particularly without the endorsement of the artist in question. A message posted to Banksy-affiliated website Pest Control states, “Banksy has NOTHING to do with any of the current or recent exhibitions and they are nothing like a genuine Banksy show. They might be crap so please don’t come to us for a refund.”

Several other Boston exhibits featuring famous artists, including Frida Kahlo and Vincent Van Gogh, have garnered criticism for charging ticket prices that are often double the price of admission into the museum where they’re displayed for mere reproductions of the artists’ works. The Banksy exhibit faces the opposite problem: it displays genuine Banksy artwork, sourced from private collectors, without the consent of the living artist. Banksy’s ethos, which endorses free, public art and rejects capitalist excess, seems entirely at odds with a show that profits from his work without his blessing.

In a 2016 interview, the show’s original organizer, Banksy’s former agent Steve Lazarides, admitted of the show that Banksy “probably f*cking hates it.”

This notion was cemented with a statement released by Banksy’s management company, in which they announced that legal action was being taken against the exhibition’s organizers, who they say “abuse Banksy’s name for their own financial greed.”

One would be remiss to ignore the fact that Banksy himself is not immune to the lure of capitalism in the art world: the ruined “Girl and Balloon,” re-christened “Love in the Bin,” sold at auction for $25.4 million in 2021. While Banksy donates much of his proceeds to various philanthropic causes, there can be no question that he benefits from the sale of his work. It could certainly be argued that capitalism, in its most deceptive form, sells itself convincingly as anti-capitalism. And it’s also true that the Art of Banksy exhibit allows the public to view works that would otherwise be sequestered in warehouses or private collections.

However, the issue of accessibility is most telling when comparing the exhibit to those that can be attributed directly to Banksy. His own exhibits have been free, meant to be stumbled upon in the street, or in the case of installations such as “Dismaland,” requiring an entry fee of a few dollars. In a final ham-fisted twist of irony, Boston’s Art of Banksy exhibit concludes by depositing viewers in the museum gift shop. Likely a nod to Banksy’s 2010 documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” a manifesto for the artist’s anti-consumerist art philosophy, this final stop on the unauthorized Banksy tour makes the exhibit’s ultimate goal entirely unambiguous: not celebration, but commodification.

Free Art: Tickets Start at $70