Accidental damage of art
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Accidental damage of art refers to damage or destructions of an artwork as a result of various types of accidents, such as natural disasters, fire, plane crash, a fall and others. Most notable damage accidents occurred during a public exhibit or transportation.
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Transportation accidents
On September 2, 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed near Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, killing 225 people. Pablo Picasso's 1963 work Le Peintre (The Painter) was part of the flight's cargo and was destroyed in the crash.
Hit by a human
In October 2006, Steve Wynn agreed to sell the 1932 painting Le Rêve by Picasso. The painting was the centerpiece of Wynn’s art collection and was displayed at his Las Vegas casino. The pre-arranged price of $139 million would make Le Rêve the most expensive art sell of the time. The day after the price deal, while showing the painting to reporters, Wynn elbowed it creating a significant tear. After a $90,000 repair, the painting was evaluated to be worth $85 million. Wynn claimed the price difference from his Lloyd's of London insurers, and the case was eventually settled out of court in March 2007.
In 2006, a man fell after stepping on his loose shoelace at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England and shattered three Chinese vases of the Qing dynasty (17th century). The man was not injured and not charged with damage, but was banned from visiting the museum. The museum managed to restore the vases, which are one of its most valuable exhibits; they are back on display, but in a protective case.
On January 22, 2010, a woman accidentally fell into The Actor (L'acteur), a 1904 painting by Pablo Picasso on exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. The fall created a rip of about Template:Convert in height in the lower right corner of a 196 cm × 115 cm (77.25 in × 45.38 in) painting. The painting is considered one of Picasso's most important works and has an estimated value of $130 million. The damage was restored in April 2010 after three months of work. For six weeks, the painting laid flat loaded with small silk sand bags in order to realign the mechanical stress caused by the fall. After that, a Mylar patch was placed on the back of the canvas and the front was carefully retouched. Mylar was chosen because of its transparency – the canvas contains another painting on its back. The painting was placed behind Plexiglass after the accident.
Several artworks of contemporary artist Tracey Emin were damaged by accident. Her Self Portrait: Bath — a neon light was tangled in barbed wire while exhibited in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. It sustained almost $2,000 worth of damage when a visitor's clothes got caught in the wire. In the same gallery, another visitor backed into her work Feeling Pregnant III. My Uncle Colin was accidentally damaged by the staff of the National Gallery of Scotland, but later repaired. In May 2004, a warehouse fire destroyed several of her works, including the embroidered tent Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95.
Negligence and diligence
In 2000, porters at Sotheby's auction house in London disposed of a box using a crushing machine. They were apparently unaware that the box was not empty but contained a painting by Lucian Freud worth about $157,000.
Some contemporary exhibits were damaged as a result of diligence of museum staff who tried to clean up the museum area of what they perceived as a foreign or unclean object.
In 1980s, a work by Joseph Beuys was altered when a janitor neatly cleaned up what he saw as a dirty bathtub in a German art gallery. In 2001, staff of the London's Eyestorm Gallery trashed an exhibit by Damien Hirst which appeared as a pile of beer bottles, ashtrays and coffee cups. In 2004, an employee of Tate Britain disposed what appeared as a plastic bag of trash sitting next to an artwork; the bag was part of an exhibition "Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art" by Gustav Metzger.
Fire
In May 2004, a fire destroyed the Momart warehouse in east London, together with more than 50 works by abstract painter Patrick Heron and other artists.
See also
- Art destruction
- Art forgery
- Art intervention
- Art theft
- Art theft and looting during World War II
- Degenerate art
- Iconoclasm
- Looted art
- Vandalism of art
