This was a red-letter day for the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Two hives were installed on the roof of our flagship Jacques Delors building. And our new VIPs (Very Important Pollinators) were let out to explore their new surroundings. All of the aggression has been bred out of these industrious new guests (as you can see). Once the colonies have reached their full size each hive is expected to produce some forty kilos of honey. But this initiative is more about the bees and educating everybody to the fact that they, a vital part of agriculture, are in alarming decline. As so often, Shakespeare says it all (though he got the gender of the monarch wrong):

For so work the honey-bees,/Creatures that by a rule in nature teach/The act of order to a peopled kingdom./They have a king and officers of sorts;/Where some, like magistrates, correct at home,/Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad,/Others, like soldiers, armèd in their stings,/Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds;/Which pillage they with merry march bring home/To the tent-royal of their emperor:/Who, busied in his majesty, surveys/The singing masons building roofs of gold,/The civil citizens kneading up the honey,/The poor mechanic porters crowding in/Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate,/The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,/Delivering o’er to executors pale/The lazy yawning drone./Shakespeare, Henry V, I. 2

This is how Lewitt himself described his work, it is taken from a 1971 article ‘Doing wall drawings’, published in Art Now, Vol. 3, N° 2, New York, June 1971.

‘The artist conceives and plans the wall drawing. It is realized by draftsmen (the artist can act as his own draftsman). The plan (written, spoken or a drawing) is interpreted by the draftsman. There are decisions which the draftsman makes, within the plan, as part of the plan. Each individual being unique, given the same instructions would carry them out differently. He would understand them differently. The artist must allow various interpretations of his plan. The draftsman perceives the artist’s plan, then reorders it to his own experience and understanding. The draftsman’s contributions are unforeseen by the artist, even if he, the artist, is the draftsman. Even if the same draftsman followed the same plan twice, there would be two different works of art. No one can do the same thing twice. The artist and the draftsman become collaborators in making the art. Each person draws a line differently and each person understands words differently. Neither lines nor words are ideas, they are the means by which ideas are conveyed. The wall drawing is the artist’s art, as long as the plan is not violated. If it is, then the draftsman becomes the artist and the drawing would be his work of art. But art that is a parody of the original concept. The draftsman may make errors in following the plan without compromising the plan. All wall drawings contain errors, they are part of the work. The plan exists as an idea but needs to be put into optimum form. Ideas of wall drawings alone are contradictions of the idea of wall drawings. The explicit plan should accompany the finished wall drawing. They are of equal importance.’