Van Gogh Museum workers cut for Pokémon exhibit conduct; One stole box of Pikachu cards

The Van Gogh Museum suspended four employees in mid-December for inappropriate behavior during the Pokémon exhibition at the Amsterdam museum, several other employees told Parool. According to the newspaper’s sources, the workers provided potential visitors with inside information about how they could snatch up the scarce tickets, and one employee was alleged to have embezzled an entire box of Pokémon cards.

The Van Gogh-Pokémon crossover exhibit featured six paintings of Pokémon in the Dutch artist’s recognizable style. It caused utter madness among visitors desperate to get their hands on rare cards of Pikachu as Van Gogh’s self-portrait, which the museum handed out after a scavenger hunt through the museum.

Parool’s sources asked to remain anonymous because they still work at the museum. The Van Gogh Museum confirmed to the newspaper that it suspended “a number of employees from operational services” for failing to adhere to the “procedures and codes of conduct” for staff. “We emphasize that we view this as an incident,” a museum spokesperson said.

The museum’s operational services workers include security guards and employees who work in the cloakroom and at the cash register. According to Parool’s sources, one of the suspended employees had been working at the museum for 25 years.

A spokesperson also told ANP, "We never comment on individual employees, so we cannot provide details. All we can say is that they did not adhere to the rules, and that we have said goodbye to them."

Tickets for the exhibit sold out weeks in advance, and the museum stopped handing out cards in October because they were being resold online for exorbitant prices. The exhibition ended on January 7.