On the topic of museum registrars and the role of museums as protectors of valuable cultural objects, museums do have their share of "incidents," where works are damaged or taken by members of the public. Stealing art from museums continues, even with the best security systems. After all, museums are open to the public, and as such offer opportunities for objects to get under foot, or to generate an emotional response that is not always positive. And who can resist the high stakes involved, when a single painting can be worth upwards of 50 million dollars?
Search the web for a report of a work getting damaged by the public, either by accident or on purpose to make a statement. Or find a story about an art theft, one that is either solved or unsolved. Post a short summary (4 sentences) of the incident (when, where, how, etc.) and a live link to the story/video,
no later than Monday, October 5, 5 pm. Thanks!
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/25/boy-trips-in-museum-and-punches-hole-through-million-dollar-painting
In 2012, 49 year old Andrew Shannon punched a hole with his fist in Claude Monet’s Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sail Boat (1874), which hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. The painting was worth 8 million pounds (around $12,000,000) and took 18 months to repair. Shannon pleaded not guilty to a jury and claimed that he “felt faint” and fell into the painting because of his heart condition. However, the jury found him guilty based on eyewitness accounts that Shannon deliberately punched the painting and did not simply fall into it as he had claimed (the punch mark was above eye level, meaning he would have had to have actively raised his arm and fist to make the mark). Shannon was sentenced to six years in jail and was banned from entering any gallery or building where paintings were publicly displayed.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2865984/Man-jailed-punching-HOLE-8million-Monet-painting-despite-claiming-fist-fell-heart-condition.html
I also thought I'd include a link to a blog I found while searching that collects cases of art vandalism:
http://art-damaged.tumblr.com
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ReplyDeleteThe theft of the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous art thefts in history. In 1911, an Italian man named Vincenzo Peruggia spilled the famous artwork underneath his cloak and left the Louvre in Paris, France. During its two year absence, the Mona Lisa's popularity grew and it became the most recognized artwork in the world. In December 1913, investigators were beginning to give up the search until Peruggia contacted a museum in Italy saying he had the painting. He explained that his reason for stealing the Mona Lisa was to take it back to its proper home, Italy. He had kept the painting hidden for so long by keeping it in a trunk in his apartment. With the painting returned to the Louvre, Peruggia was sentenced to seven months in prison.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cnn.com/2013/11/18/world/europe/mona-lisa-the-theft/
On two different occasions (one of which was as recent as this past August), a deck chair from the RMS Olympic (sister ship to the RMS Titanic) that was on display in a Southampton Sea museum has been destroyed. Both incidences involved parents who seemed to not be paying attention to their children, or simply did not care, and the children climbed over the roped off display case and on top of the case, which resulted in the glass case ultimately shattering under the weight of the child. The city of Southampton has had to shell out money both times to restore the chair and ultimately came to a decision to put the chair into storage and display replicas of the deck chairs that people could sit on, which entirely defeats the purpose of a museum in my opinion.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/13579935.Museum_visitors_vandalise_rare_deck_chair_from_Titanic_sister_ship/?ref=rss
In 2013 there was evidently a pretty sizable theft that occurred in the Kunsthal in the Netherlands. A group of Romanian twenty-somethings stole seven paintings from the gallery, including two Monets, a Picasso, a Gauguin, a Freud, and a Meijer de Haan. They really didn’t know anything about art, but they did know about stealing and had heard that art sold for a lot of money. In their case, though, they weren’t able to find a buyer (because the art was internationally registered), and they were eventually caught after a couple months of investigation. The real travesty, though, is that the ring leader’s mother burned all of the paintings in an attempt to save her son. This not only backfired on her, but also puts us as the world seven fantastic paintings short.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nrc.nl/kunsthal-en/
In 1914, the Rokeby Venus by Deigo Valesquez was attacked by British suffragette, Mary Richardson, with a meat chopper. The painting, which was hanging in the National Gallery of Art in London at the time of the attack, depicts a nude Venus laying on her side while peering into a mirror held by Cupid. Richardson claimed that the attack was sparked after the arrest of another British suffragette, Emmeline Pankhurst and because of "the way men visitors gaped at it all day long". The knife marks were described by the Times as,"a cruel wound in the neck [of Venus]". The painting has been fully restored.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-26491421
http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/rebecca-willis/slashing-rokeby-venus
One of the most famous art heists in the country happened in 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Two men disguised as Boston police officers entered the museum, claiming they were responding to a call, and were let in by one of the security officers on duty. Once inside, they were able to handcuff the security guards on duty together and restrain them in the basement of the museum. The thieves went throughout the museum and stole 13 pieces of art, including works by Rembrant and Vermeer, valued at over 500 million dollars. The case is still open to this day and no arrests have been made nor have any of the artworks been found and it remains one of the most mysterious heists in the museum world.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.gardnermuseum.org/resources/theft
In the month of January 2015, in Egypt there was a problem with King Tutankhamun's , King Tut, bread last year...it broke off. Since it broke off it had to go into conservation to be patched up...completely normal, right?NOPE, didn't happen. So, the bread was placed back on the tomb, happy ending? NOT AT ALL. It was later found out that who ever had "fixed" the bread "used a very irreversible material-epoxy has a very high property for attaching and is used on metal or stone..."Conservators suspect that the the museum was "in a rush to get it displayed again and used this quick drying, irreversible material." There are many different sources from the museum about what happened, but the case is being "investigating the case and will release a report once its committee discovers the full details and source of the damage."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.forbes.com/sites/clairevoon/2015/01/23/king-tuts-burial-mask-damaged-from-hasty-repairs/
http://betacrumb.com/2015/01/king-tuts-mask-irreversibly-damaged-by-museum-staff/
http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/king-tut-beard-glue-damage/2015/01/22/id/619973/
In August of 2010 Vincent Van Gogh's "Poppy Flowers" was stolen for the second time in a museum in Cairo. Egyptian authorities falsely reported that they had recovered the painting from two Italian suspects boarding a plane, but then later retracted that statement. Information was not given on why they believed the art work was in the Italians possession, only that they seemed suspicious after quickly exiting the museum. The painting was previously stolen in 1977 but later recovered with little information about the initial theft. The work, worth $50 million, is still missing and a $175,000 reward posted.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/aug/22/stolen-van-gogh-still-missing
http://www.timesofisrael.com/is-the-hunt-for-rembrandts-stolen-galilee-almost-over/
ReplyDeleteThis article is about the theft of the collection in the "Dutch Room" of the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Massachusetts. The article is more specifically about a piece entitled "The Storm on the sea of Galilee", a piece depicting a biblical story of Jesus calming the sea of Galilee during a particularly violent storm with his disciples and the artist as the crew on the ship. This piece was stolen along with others back in 1990 and investigators now think they have a clue that could lead to its rediscovery. According to the article, the FBI in Boston received a tip that the thieves fenced the paintings in the Philadelphia or Connecticut area. Authorities now are asking the public to step up and turn in any evidence they may have with pardons from the attorney's office...and a $5,000,000 reward doesn't hurt either!
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/08/arts/restoring-a-leonardo-drawing-that-was-hit-by-a-shotgun-blast.html
ReplyDeleteIn July 1987, The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist by Leonardo was shot by a vandal with a shotgun from a distance of about seven feet away. This attack happened where the work is housed, in the National Gallery in Britain. The name of the vandal was Robert Cambridge. He claimed that his reasoning for attacking the work was to show his upset with "political, social and economic conditions in Britain. Luckily, the blast did not directly come into contact with the work but instead with the protective glass.
However, heartbreakingly the glass was pulverized and a hole six inches in diameter was torn within the work, specifically in a section of the Virgin's robe. According to the gallery's chief restorer, only about one square centimeter of the drawing had been lost due to all of the restoration work. The work was done mostly with a magnifying glass as well as surgical instruments, and has since been repaired and is back on display. Gaps that were in the surface of the drawing were filled in with paper fiber pulp and retouched with charcoal and white chalk, which were the original materials used.
http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/tacoma-art-museum-visitor-accused-snapping-chunk-c/nnrft/
ReplyDeleteOccurring only a few say ago, on September 30, 2015, an all glass Chihuly piece was intentionally damaged by a visitor of the Tacoma Art Museum. Reports say that the suspect, Jon Malcolm Maleak Meys, swung at the the sculpture, cracking off a substantial section of the piece. Meys then proceeded to pull the fire alarm on his way out of the museum. The Tacoma Art Museum is working closely with Chihuly's studio to figure out how or if the glass sculpture can be repaired. As for the prosecution of Mey's, the article reports, "Meys pleaded not guilty to charges of malicious mischief and tampering with a fire alarm before a judge on Monday. He is being held on $20,000 bail". Unfortunately it is clear that this incident was no accident, but the museum and prosecutors seem to be responding appropriately to the situation.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/klee-painting-stolen-from_n_511577.html?
ReplyDeleteIn 1989, "Portrait in the Garden", a painting by Swiss artist, Paul Klee was stolen from the Marlborough Gallery in New York. A man who called himself an art dealer, from Florida, tried to sell the painting in 2010 to Robert Landau, a gallery owner in Montreal. Landau was suspicious of the situation and said he would need to investigate the work for legitimacy before he could purchase it. Once he found out it was stolen, Landau contacted Homeland Security and the Klee was handed over to London-based Art Loss Register. The $100,000 dollar painting is now owned by Marlborough's insurer, Lloyd's of London, which was auctioned. The investigation of the alleged art dealer from Florida is ongoing.
In January 2010, a 130$ million dollar painting created by Pablo Picasso was ripped by an art student in the New York Metropolitan Museum. The student states that she accidentally tripped, which caused a 6 inch rip in the bottom right of the painting “The Actor” which was completed in 1905. The painting had to be taken down in order to take it to the museums conservation studio. Since it was a vertical tear and it was done at the bottom of the painting, the rip was not too difficult to fix. Reading this article made me think how the curator should have anticipated an accident like this. I don’t mean that the curator should have known that there was going to be a clumsy art student that accidentally tripped and tore the painting, but the curator should have anticipated that things like this do occur. It is the curator’s job to cover the painting with a glass, or have a rope that gives the painting and the viewer some room for error. The thing is, accidents do happen but accidents can’t happen when a 130$ million dollar painting is involved.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245910/Picassos-The-Actor-painting-damaged-student-Metropolitan-Museum-New-York.html
http://mentalfloss.com/article/63602/15-things-you-should-know-about-michelangelos-pieta
ReplyDeletehttps://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1243&dat=19720522&id=mQg0AAAAIBAJ&sjid=v_cDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6676,2305013&hl=en
Probably one of the harshest attacks on art was when Michelangelo’s Pieta was attacked. It rests in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. On February 9, 1972 a geologist, Lazlo Toth, took a sledgehammer to the marble twelve times and broke a good amount of the arm and face of Mary up. As he was also claiming he was Jesus Christ. Mary took most of the damage. The witnesses of this actually took the bits of marble that fell to the floor and they were unrecoverable. The restoration of a lot of Mary came from her back. He was not charged and deemed insane.
On December 22nd 2000, three armed robbers stole three pieces from the Stockholm Museum in Sweden. They stole one self-portrait by Rembrandt and two paintings by Renoir, all told the work was worth about 30 million dollars. They entered the museum through the waterfront, and escaped on small speedboats. The staff of the museum believed that the men knew what they were looking for, grabbing pieces that were not too large and easy to carry, whilst still being quite valuable.
ReplyDeletehttp://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=81873&page=1