Museum Mishaps
A gallery of blunders — the tourists, toddlers, cleaners, and champagne corks that met priceless art and lost.
The Tourist Who Sat on the Crystal Chair
A photo op, a crunch, and a $60,000 lesson in signage
A visitor lowered himself onto Nicola Bolla's Swarovski-crystal-encrusted 'Van Gogh' chair to strike a pose. The chair, which was art and not furniture, promptly gave way beneath him.
A Child, a Canvas, and a Very Bad Afternoon
When a small fist meets a large price tag
Every guard's nightmare: an unsupervised child, a moment of momentum, and a hole punched clean through a priceless modern painting.
The Visitor Who Fell Into a Picasso
An art class, a stumble, and a six-inch tear
During an adult education class at the Met, a woman lost her balance and fell directly into Picasso's 'The Actor', opening a six-inch tear in the lower canvas.
The Bored Guard Who Gave a Painting Eyes
First day on the job, ballpoint pen, avant-garde masterpiece
On his very first day, a security guard grew bored and drew two pairs of eyes in ballpoint pen on the faceless figures of Anna Leporskaya's avant-garde painting 'Three Figures'.
The Cleaner Who Binned the Art
One person's installation is another's mess
A diligent cleaner scrubbed away a carefully applied patina from a Martin Kippenberger installation, mistaking the artwork for a dirty stain — a recurring hazard of conceptual art.
Ecce Mono: The Monkey Christ
The world's most beloved botched restoration
Well-meaning parishioner Cecilia Giménez attempted to touch up a flaking fresco of Christ and produced 'Ecce Mono' — a hazy, simian visage that became a global sensation.
Dropped on Delivery
The sculpture that didn't survive its own installation
The most fragile moment in an artwork's life is often the move. Countless masterpieces have been chipped, cracked, or toppled by the very professionals hired to install them.
Death by Celebration
A popped cork finds the one painting in the room
Nothing punctuates a glamorous private view like a champagne cork ricocheting off a canvas. The very toast to art becomes its assailant.
The $200,000 Selfie Domino
One crouch, one wobble, one very expensive chain reaction
A visitor crouched for a photo beside a row of crown-topped pedestals, lost her balance, and set off a domino collapse down the entire line of sculptures.
The Shattered Balloon Dog
A tap, a wobble, and a pile of blue porcelain
A collector at a Miami art fair gave Jeff Koons's porcelain 'Balloon Dog (Blue)' an inquisitive tap. It wobbled off its pedestal and shattered into a heap of shards.
The Vase Smashed in Protest
An artist who dropped an urn, and a protester who dropped his
Local artist Maximo Caminero picked up and deliberately smashed one of Ai Weiwei's painted Han Dynasty vases in protest at the museum's neglect of local artists — an irony given Ai's own famous urn-dropping.
The Carmen Tisch Incident
The most comprehensively awful thing to happen to one painting
In a single visit, an intoxicated Carmen Tisch allegedly punched, scratched, and slid against a Clyfford Still painting valued in the tens of millions — and, prosecutors said, may have urinated on it (though she reportedly missed).
The Trouble With 'Fountain'
The urinal that keeps inviting the wrong kind of use
Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' — a signed urinal that founded conceptual art — has repeatedly tempted performance artist Pierre Pinoncelli to urinate in it and, later, attack it with a hammer.