What looks like two old beer cans but definitely is *not* two old beer cans?

It’s French artist Alexandre Lavet’s All the good times we spent together. The unique artwork recently wound up in a garbage bag after a mechanic mistook the cans for trash at Lisse’s LAM Museum.

The museum’s staff say it was an honest mistake. The mechanic was there to repair a glass elevator and thought he was helping clean up. “He was just doing his job,” museum director Sietske van Zanten said. “On a positive note, it’s a compliment for Alexandre Lavet.”

All the good times we spent together convincingly resembles two half litre containers of Juplier, a Belgian beer. They are dented and, unless someone looks at them closely, it’s easy to miss that they’re actually hand-painted works of art.

The cans are meant to serve as a tribute to Lavet’s friends and the time they’ve spent hanging out and drinking beer.

Nearly trashed

The museum features art in unusual places, in this case an elevator shaft, which suggests the cans were left behind by construction workers doing some day drinking. Elsewhere at the LAM, visitors might encounter what appears to be an old banana peel, the work of artist Alicja Kozłowska, and two slices of fake meat designed by artist João Loureiro.

The staff launched a full search after the cans went missing. Curator Elisah van den Bergh found them in a garbage bag along with some other rubbish that was about to get tossed out.

All the good times we spent together was still in good shape and, after a bit of cleaning, the cans were moved to a safer location.

“They’re currently presented in a more traditional way,” museum spokeswoman Fleur Rewijk told Dutch News. “They have been given a temporary place of honour in the entrance of the museum on a classic pedestal.”

One person’s trash is another person’s treasure

The incident has ‘gone viral’ since the museum shared the details in a press release. The Guardian and CNN are among the international outlets that have reported on it.

This also isn’t the first time a work of art has been destroyed or mistaken for something else in recent years.

An employee at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem painted over a black dot on a white surface in 2017. It was actually a minimalist artwork titled Portrait of the nail behind the canvas. 

And in 2011 several hapless visitors walked on a four by 14 metre carpet of peanut butter at the Boijmans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam. The installation was devised by Wim T. Schippers in 1962 and contained 1,100 litres of peanut butter.

Busy days ahead

As for All the good times we spent together, on Wednesday morning Rewijk said the museum’s staff is getting ready to be busy in the coming days.

“Today is the first day the museum is open since the incident hit the news worldwide,” she said. “Now that the story has gone viral internationally, the attention is only increasing. We’re expecting more visitors in the coming period. Online we’re already seeing an increase in the number of followers and interactions.”

But the cans won’t stay on that pedestal forever.

“We want to draw extra attention to the artwork after the events of the past few weeks,” she said. “Where it will be placed afterward will remain a surprise for a while. We like to surprise our visitors in unexpected ways. The cans could wind up anywhere in the museum.”