Curators at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday after confirming their 270-square-foot hexagon of peanut butter had finally achieved optimal spread density.
ROTTERDAM — Beneath the pale, flat light of a Dutch afternoon, the smell of roasted legumes hangs heavy in the climate-controlled gallery, cutting sharply through the museum’s usual scent of floor wax and damp wool coats. Here, curators breathed a collective sigh of relief Thursday after confirming their 270-square-foot hexagon of peanut butter had finally achieved optimal spread density.
The installation, a tribute to the Dutch conceptual artist Wim T. Schippers, required 800 pounds of the commercial paste to be meticulously troweled directly onto the hardwood floor. It is not a task undertaken lightly. A team of four senior conservators, clad in white Tyvek suits and armed with precision plastering tools, spent three agonizing days perfecting the edges of the massive brown smear so it maintained a mathematically flawless geometry. They worked in staggered shifts to avoid overexposure to sodium and hydrogenated vegetable oils, slowly backing their way out of the room so as not to leave footprints in the freshly laid medium.
If the ambient humidity fluctuates by even two degrees, the surface oils begin to pool at the vertices, completely undermining Schippers's delicate commentary on the futility of human endeavor.
To preserve the piece’s structural integrity, the museum has implemented a sprawling security apparatus. Guards are permanently stationed at all four corners of the room to intercept wandering toddlers, errant dust mites, and a growing syndicate of local pigeons that have begun congregating on the gallery’s glass skylight, drawn from across the city by the overwhelming aroma of a colossal, unprotected snack.
As the afternoon light faded into a cold European drizzle, a solitary custodian stood at the threshold of the exhibition hall. He stared silently into the vast, creamy expanse of the void, his mop bucket sitting uselessly by his side.