Museums are at the frontline of hostilities against works of art. Last sunday, a £6,000 sculpture on display at the Royal Academy in London, was smashed. A visitor fell into a cordoned-off area, knocking the work to the floor where it broke into hundreds of pieces. The 9ft ceramic sculpture, called Christina, was one of five by Costa Rican artist Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez on display at a show that was curated by artist Tracey Emin.

Before the fall … Tracey Emin stands in front of Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez’s artwork Frauleins Christina, Panthea, Zenobia, Semiramis and Guinevere at the Royal Academy. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

In London and beyond, the incident has again raised the uncomfortable question of providing security for priceless art in public settings. Over the years a price has been paid for accessibility. In January 2006 a a man tripped over his shoelaces at the Fitzwilliam museum in Cambridge and smashed a magnificent Qing dynasty vase. And during the 70’s and 80’s a series of violent attacks on works of art took place.

One of the most scandalous attacks occurred in 1972, when a Hungarian man attacked Michelangelo’s ”Pieta” in St. Peter’s Basilica, striking it 10 times with a hammer. In 1975 Rembrandt’s ”Night Watch” was slashed with a bread knife at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Acid was thrown at another Rembrandt, ”The Danae” at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1985.

In 1986, a tall, brown-haired man walked into the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and repeatedly slashed ”Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III,” (see below) a masterpiece by the American artist Barnett Newman. He served five months in jail and three months on parole. However, in 1997 he returned to the museum and slashed another work by Newman with a small knife.

Barnett Newmans restored ‘Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III’ at the Stedelijk Museum.

Examples of damage caused by museum visitors, both accidentaly and purposely, are few and far between. Works of art stand a far greater chance of being destroyed at the hands of curators, picture handlers or cleaners. Most of the major museums have had to issue shame-faced apologies for breakages at one time or another.

In 2001, a delicate shell-shaped glass sculpture by the US artist Dale Chihuly, valued at £35,000, was smashed by a contractor setting up for an evening function at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Four years ago, a rubbish bag which formed part of an installation by Gustav Metzger, entitled Recreation of First Public Demonstration of Auto-Destructive Art, was innocently gathered up by a cleaner at Tate Britain and thrown into a crusher.

Earlier this year, National Gallery handlers dropped a painting by the Renaissance artist Domenico Beccafumi. Made on a panel composed of three planks of timber, the painting broke along a joint. And at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earlier this month, a security guard found a 15th-century terracotta relief sculpture of Saint Michael the Archangel by the Italian artist Andrea della Robbia on the floor; it had apparently come loose from its wall-mounted frame during the night. The masterpiece survived miraculously, but apparently not all museums have a guardian angel to protect their precious belongings.

Italian Renaissance sculptor Andrea della Robbia’s “Saint Michael the Archangel” fell off a wall at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and was damaged.

Read more in The Guardian, July 28 and July 30, 2008.

Related posts:  Painting meets its femme fatale  //  Armando Museum reduced to ashes  //  NMI curator: concerts damage palace museums  //  Why shouldn’t museums be for pure pleasure?  //

This entry was posted on woensdag, juli 30th, 2008 at 11:21 pm and is filed under Art, Ethics, Europe, Museum, USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.