A museum in Rotterdam is honouring a pillar of the Dutch art community by covering a part of a gallery floor with peanut butter.
Using 800 kilos of the sleek spread, staff created a 25-square-metre hexagon on the ground of a gallery on the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, a visible arts museum in Rotterdam, Netherlands, following instructions from conceptual artist Wim T. Schippers, who died last month at 83, and first created the piece within the Nineteen Sixties.
To execute the “Peanut Butter Floor,” the museum appointed so-called ‘peanut butter plasterers,’ who had previously installed the artwork “with great precision” in 2011, in accordance with an outline on the museum’s website.
“On July 2 and three, armed with buckets of peanut butter and plastering tools, they set to work again to recreate the ground,” it said.
Staff spread peanut butter on a floor to recreate the ‘Peanut Butter Floor’ artwork in tribute to Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers on the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands, July 3, 2026.
AP Photo/Mouneb Taim
Described as a “conceptual art piece” by the museum, it is an element of a broader series of floor installations ideated in 1962 by Schippers, which also saw him cover floors in shards of glass and salt.
The artwork “revolves around the concept that there’s a floor of peanut butter in a museum and visitors wonder why,” in accordance with the museum’s description, which added that it is supposed to boost the query, “Is that this art?” and “Am I allowed to search out this beautiful?”
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“Schippers viewed art as something that doesn’t necessarily need to be logical or useful. It might be nonsensical — identical to life itself — and precisely for that reason be worthwhile,” it added.
The “Peanut Butter Floor” has been installed again and again since its original presentation in 1962, in accordance with the museum. In each instance, it was constructed in accordance with directions written by Schippers, it explained, adding that it selected this work to commemorate the irreverent figure because it is one among his most talked-about and recognizable creations, encapsulating his singular perspective, sense of humour and propensity to lean into the absurd.
“Precisely since it is so characteristic of his way of considering and dealing, the Peanut Butter Floor is a fitting tribute,” it wrote.
People take a look at peanut butter spread across a museum floor in tribute to Dutch artist Wim T. Schippers, who died last month, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on July 9, 2026.
Niels van der Pas/via AP
All the things all the way down to the brand of peanut butter used was decided by Schippers, who opted for Calvé because he said it “spread so nicely,” though he never specified the form of the piece.
The artwork has invited loads of attention throughout the years. In 1997, schoolchildren vandalized a version of the installation at Utrecht’s Centraal Museum by covering it with chocolate sprinkles and slices of bread, The Guardian wrote, an end result that Schipper reportedly approved of.
Then, on the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in 2011, a visitor walked over a version of the installation and slipped on it, the U.K. outlet also reported.
During his profession, Schippers presented works that included a chair upholstered with canned noodles, a table covered in peas and, in 2011, unveiled a four-metre-high structure titled “Unauthorized Parking” that resembled a large pile of excrement in Media Park within the Dutch city of Hilversum. He was also a television author and comedian. Within the Netherlands, he was best often called the voice of Ernie, Kermit the Frog and Count von Count on the Dutch version of Sesame Street.
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