Take the Money and Run

Ole Juncker / Denmark / 2025 / World Premiere / 82 min

Everyone had an opinion about the work, but was there a method to the madness? This was the big question on everyone’s mind when artist Jens Haaning created his work ‘Take the Money and Run’ at the Danish museum Kunsten in 2021. The artist had borrowed 70,000 euros from the museum and intended to frame the cash in two large frames to illustrate the annual salary of an Austrian and a Dane respectively. Instead, he named the piece ‘Take the Money and Run’ and did just that: Took the money, ran with it and refused to pay it back. The film of the same name follows Haaning in the chaotic time that followed, when the story of the work travelled around the world and the museum threatened him with a civil suit. ‘Take the Money and Run’ is a frantic documentation of the time that followed, but it is also an intimate insight into the life of an uncompromising artist with an incredible mind and a correspondingly miserable economy. And it also reveals what Jens Haaning actually spent his money on!