Marina Abramović Institute Apologizes to Jay Z

Jay Z and Marina Abramović have settled their beef. The performance artist called out the rapper for breaking his promise to donate to her performance art institute, but it turns out that it was all a big misunderstanding.

Earlier this week, Abramović told art magazine Spike that her involvement in Jay Z’s 2013 music video for “Picasso Baby,” an homage to her work “The Artist Is Present,” was “a one-way transaction.”

In the video, directed by Mark Romanek, Jay Z performed the song for six hours straight at New York’s Pace Gallery. Wale, Judd Apatow, Rosie Perez, Taraji P. Henson, and Abramović all made cameos.

But two years later, Abramović spoke out in disdain over the collaboration. “I am very pissed by this, since he adapted my work only under one condition: that he would help my institute. which he didn’t,” she told Spike. “In the end it was only a one-way transaction. I will never do it again, that I can say. Never. I was really naive in this kind of world. It was really new to me, and I had no idea that this would happen. It’s so cruel, it’s incredible. I will stay away from it for sure.”

But things took a turn on Wednesday when Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Jay Z’s art advisor, produced his receipt from the Marina Abramović Institute to Artnet news.

“Thank you for your donation,” reads the receipt from the Hudson, New York institute.

The receipt is marked with the number W984804 and acknowledges a “substantial” donation.

The Marina Abramović Institute confirmed that Jay Z had donated after all and issued an apology to the hip-hop mogul and Abramović. “Marina Abramović was not informed of Shawn ‘Jay Z’ Carter’s donation from two years ago when she recently did an interview with Spike magazine in Brazil,” the statement said. “We are sincerely sorry to both Marina Abramović and Shawn ‘Jay Z’ Carter for this, and since then we have taken to appropriate actions to reconcile this matter.”