More than 800 pounds of peanut butter have been spread across a museum floor in the Netherlands as a fitting tribute to Dutch conceptual artist Wim T. Schippers, who died on June 10 at the age of 83. The iconic artwork, titled Pindakaasvloer or “Peanut butter floor,” reopened to the public on Friday at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam for a two-month exhibition.
Schippers first created the peculiar installation in 1969 at a gallery in Loenersloot, establishing it as one of his most recognizable and controversial works. The latest iteration features more than 800 pounds of smooth peanut butter spread across a hexagonal floor measuring 25 square meters, or about 270 square feet. Two museum employees spent several days applying the peanut butter using drywall trowels, carefully spreading it to a thickness of 2 centimeters.
The Dutch peanut butter brand Calvé donated the tubs of smooth peanut butter used in this iteration, while Schippers deliberately left the specifications flexible. He did not specify the size, shape, thickness, or type of peanut butter the work needs, allowing each reinstallation to reflect the particular space and moment in which it exists. This flexibility embodies one of the central philosophies of Schippers’ art: that meaning and presentation can shift with context and interpretation.
Schippers was far more than a visual artist. He was also a prolific television and radio personality, and for decades he voiced beloved characters in the Dutch version of “Sesame Street,” including the voice of Ernie and Kermit the Frog. His career spanned multiple decades and multiple media, from absurdist television programs to experimental visual art. He created the peanut butter floor as part of a broader “Floor Covering Series” that included installations made with glass shards and salt, each designed to provoke contemplation about what constitutes art.
During the 1960s, Schippers was associated with the international Fluxus movement, an avant-garde collective that emphasized experimental performance, conceptual ideas, and the blurring of boundaries between art and everyday life. He gained a reputation for absurdist and provocative works that challenged conventional notions of artistic meaning. Rather than creating beautiful or technically impressive objects, Schippers’ work often celebrated the seemingly meaningless and absurd, asking viewers to reconsider why they expected art to be anything other than what it literally was.
The peanut butter floor has been exhibited several times over the decades. In 1997, when the work was displayed at the Central Museum in Utrecht, Schippers told journalists gathered there, “Isn’t it fantastic that we are all standing here looking at peanut butter?” A food photographer and writer who saw that 1997 exhibition as a teenager recalled to reporters that the most memorable aspect was the smell. She noted that the pungent scent of peanut butter wafted throughout the museum, making the invisible sensory dimension of the artwork as important as its visual component.
The work has not been without its mishaps. When displayed in 2011, multiple visitors stepped into the sticky artwork. More humorously, in 1997, the piece was “vandalized” when a group of people placed 12 slices of bread and several bags of hagelslag—chocolate sprinkles commonly eaten on Dutch breakfast bread—on the floor. Rather than being offended, Schippers responded with characteristic wit, telling the Dutch newspaper Volkskrant, “It doesn’t look bad. The sprinkles have been applied with a sense of proportion and a skillful hand.”
Schippers’ television work was equally bold. He was known for pushing boundaries on Dutch television with shows like “Hoepla” and “De Fred Haché Show,” which featured absurdist comedy and content that would have been considered shocking for broadcast television at the time. He created hundreds of songs for his programs and profoundly influenced the Dutch language itself, with many catch phrases and word jokes from his shows entering common usage.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen acquired the concept of the peanut butter floor in 2010 and installed it for the first time in 2011. Museum director Sjarel Ex at the time called it “one of the most important acquisitions made in 2010.” The museum worked with Schippers in recent months to establish guidelines for this new iteration, agreeing the work should be executed in any geometric shape, using smooth peanut butter without chunks, and above all, material that was easily spreadable.
The decision to recreate the peanut butter floor as a tribute to Schippers honors not just his artistic legacy, but his philosophy that art need not be serious, precious, or permanent to be meaningful. In a world that often treats art as an investment or status symbol, Schippers’ peanut butter floor remains a quietly radical statement about what matters in creative expression.