Banksy Fake Banknote Artwork Joins British Museum Collection.

Banksy Fake Banknote Artwork Joins British Museum Collection.

More than a decade after he cheekily stuck a fake artwork to the wall of one of its galleries, Banksy has officially joined the collection of the British Museum for the first time. The museum has acquired its first work by the anonymous graffiti artist, a fake £10 banknote depicting Diana, Princess of Wales, which will join its collection of coins, medals and other currency. The work, entitled Di-faced Tenner, was one of thousands of copies produced by the artist in 2004 as part of a planned art stunt. Unlike the other artwork, a fake cave painting on concrete, which was loaned again to the museum for a recent exhibition on dissent and protest, the note has been donated to the museum by the artist’s representative Pest Control. Tom Hockenhull, curator of modern money at the museum, said he had been trying for years to get hold of a genuine Di-faced Tenner to add to the museum’s collection of “skit notes”, or parodies of real banknotes. “The problem is, because [Banksy] was effectively producing them as photocopies, anyone else could do that as well, so there was no way to really verify whether they were from Banksy or not.” The artefact would complement other objects held by the museum, he said, such as the bank restriction note made in 1820 by the celebrated caricaturist George Cruikshank, which depicted 11 people being hanged to illustrate the human cost of Bank of England policy at the time.