Di-Faced Tenner (2004) is one of the most conceptually precise and historically significant works in Banksy's entire output - and the only work he has produced that has been officially acquired by the British Museum. The title is a pun on "defaced" and on "Di" - Princess Diana, whose portrait replaces the customary image of Queen Elizabeth II on the front of what is otherwise a faithful reproduction of the Bank of England ten-pound note. The reverse retains Charles Darwin, and the note's legend has been altered to read "Banksy of England" alongside the motto "Trust No One."

The work was created in 2004 and distributed by Banksy in a series of spectacular public interventions. He rained notes down on crowds at the Notting Hill and Reading Festivals and released a briefcase full of them at a busy London tube station at rush hour. The notes entered circulation briefly as real currency - an act of economic performance art that blurred the boundary between the artwork and the financial system it was satirising with a completeness that few conceptual artists have achieved.

The Di-Faced Tenner operates on multiple levels simultaneously. As a commentary on Princess Diana - her estrangement from the royal family, her use by the press, her mythology as a counter-royal - it is pointed and specific. As a commentary on the nature of money - on the arbitrary authority that makes a piece of printed paper worth ten pounds - it is more universal. As a performance, in which real crowds briefly handled and spent counterfeit currency without realising it, it is without parallel in the history of British street art.

In February 2019 the British Museum officially acquired its first work by Banksy - and the work chosen was the Di-Faced Tenner, which joined the institution's Department of Coins, Medals and Paper Money. The acquisition confirmed what collectors had understood for years: that this small offset lithograph is not merely a stunt but a primary document of twenty-first century British art and a genuine contribution to the long history of currency as artistic medium.