Guess it’s true what they say about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure — or art, in this case.
A mechanic working at the LAM Museum, located in the town of Lisse in the western Netherlands, came across what he thought were a couple of empty, dented beer cans someone had carelessly discarded in an elevator, so he did what he thought was the polite thing and tossed them in the nearest garbage can.
What he didn’t realize was that the beer cans were actually a piece of artwork by French artist Alexandre Lavet titled “All the Good Times We Spent Together.”
Museum spokesperson Froukje Budding tells Agence France-Presse that artworks are often left in unusual places, such as the elevator, to surprise visitors, according to The Guardian.
Luckily, a museum curator noticed that the cans were missing and found them in a garbage bag, just as they were about to be thrown out.