Pop artist Ashley Longshore — known for portraits of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Queen Elizabeth II — literally littered her booth at Aqua Art fair in Miami, Fla., with $30,000 in singles.
And a source told us some sticky-fingered guests were grabbing wads of cash on the fair’s opening day.
“One guy made off with maybe $100 and that’s in one dollar bills,” said a spy of guests who were grabbing the cash and posing for pics.
We hear the scene functioned as a “social experiment” to see who would grab the loot.
Longshore, who used her own funds, tells Page Six, the work was about “capitalism.”
“These art fairs are about money,” she says. “Yes, the art is great — but the fairs charge a fortune to participate. The shipping costs are ungodly and the entire city of Miami triples all of their pricing to gouge the art and fashion community.”
The satellite fair is going on during Art Basel Miami Beach.
The artist said guests’ “immediate response mostly was, ‘Can we take it?’”
She explained that she told them, “This is my hard-earned money. Do you feel comfortable taking money you didn’t earn?”
She told us, “95% of people dropped the money immediately and said, ‘No.’ Their entitlement shifted to a moral decision.”
There was still that other 5%, which Longshore called the “drunken, entitled, tequila-soaked masses packing wads of cash in their pockets and purses.”
She says their response was, “‘Yes I earned it, I bent over and picked it up.’”
Cameras were set up in the booth to record people’s reactions, and will be used in an upcoming art piece.
“I am making art while I am selling art,” says Longshore.
She added artily: “Capitalism, money, success, excess, luxury, body image, cash on the floor. I will be your art whore, will you be mine?”
