The Day Banksy Sold Everything for Sixty Dollars

Banksy set up an unmarked stall in Central Park and sold original pieces—work that would collectively have fetched over $200,000 at auction—for sixty dollars each. No branding, no artist statement, just a folding table in the middle of foot traffic, and most people walked straight past it. A few didn’t. One woman apparently haggled him down to fifty for two. The stall was gone the next day.

The obvious reading is the one Banksy intended: value is context, the gallery is the price tag, people can’t see what’s in front of them without the right framing. Fine, point taken. But I keep thinking about the people who did stop—who had sixty dollars and an open eye and no particular reason to trust their own instincts—and just bought the thing because they liked it. That seems like the better story.