Hasta La Ideas

As if museums don’t have it tough enough already, what with daily news of layoffs, painful cutbacks and ever-shrinking endowments, now one museum in particular also has become the brunt of a prank. In case you missed it late last week, scheduling it to happen the same day as a real concert that evening, a radio program in Vienna sent out a Beyonce look-alike on a private tour through the Albertina museum (something they apparently do on a regular basis for visiting celebrities). So, sure, that’s fine, silly fun and while the museum was a little miffed when it found out the truth, they slowly turned out to be good sports about it. Though this could also be a reaction to help clean up the extra egg on their face move they made before learning of the prank when they publicly chided Beyonce for sending a look-alike after learning that another Beyonce (or, rather, the real one) was out shopping elsewhere in Vienna:

Originally believing that Beyonce sent a double so that she could go shopping, the museum had said it would protest to the star’s management.

“What a cheek,” Albertina spokeswoman Verena Dahlitz was quoted as saying.