museum piece

Do you recognize this watering can? Yesterday I went to the Upper East Side municipal cooling center, otherwise known as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, basically just to find some relief from the heat. I went into one exhibit, called "A Curator's Eye," honoring someone who'd just retired or something and showing the items he'd selected for the collection in recent years. When I saw this I knew immediately that it had come from the Ikea catalog, which is cool, I'm glad Ikea is being included in museum collections, it makes me feel better about owning so much of it. But I went into hysterical laughter when I read the caption: Vallo Watering Can, 2004. Promised gift of anonymous donor. Can't someone come up with the two dollars the Met would need to buy this thing outright? Hell, I would do it! And is the donor anonymous because it's so embarrassing to only promise he'll probably give it to them in the future, or because it's too cheap a gift, or what? And is the watering can used? It had better not have a scratch on it.
I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation for the status of this item, perhaps to do with storage fees, (surely not a tax break!) but I really can't figure out what it is.