A 'hungry' college student ate a banana at a museum. It was a $160,000 piece of art.

• The Italian artist's $160,000 piece, known as the "Comedian," was displayed in a South Korean museum.
• The famous artwork features a ripe banana duct taped to the wall.

The long trek through a museum can make anyone hungry, but most people refrain from eating the work on display.

On Thursday, a South Korean art student, who said he had skipped breakfast, was too hungry to resist the temptation of a banana taped to the wall, the Strait Times reported.

The ripe banana was part of the "Comedian," an artwork valued at $160,000 by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. It is now on display at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul.

The museum promptly replaced the banana with a new one. It had bananas on hand because the fruit art is typically refreshed every few days.

"The student told the museum he ate it because he was hungry," a museum spokesperson told CNN. The spokesperson said the artist had been informed but didn't expect any charges to be filed against the student.

Eating Cattelan's banana artwork has become something of an artistic act in itself. The South Korean student — dressed in a dark suit — was filmed casually peeling the tape off the wall, and then peeling the banana, before facing the camera as he ate it.

The student, whose name wasn't revealed, told a local news outlet that he thought eating the banana could be considered art in itself, The Philippine Star reported. "Damaging a work of modern art could also be (interpreted as a kind of) artwork," he said.

The student isn't the first to eat Cattelan's famous art for the sake of art. Back in 2019, performance artist David Datuna also ate the "Comedian."

At the time, Datuna called his act the "Hungry Artist."

"I love Maurizio Cattelan artwork and I really love this installation. It's very delicious," Datuna said in an Instagram post after the incident.