If you’ve ever walked through a museum or
an art gallery you may have noticed that a lot of the art and historical treasure on
display is completely exposed. In fact, with the exception of some of the
world’s more famous pieces of art, you could easily fall over and damage much of the artwork
on display worldwide, right now. So, what would happen if you did trip and
accidentally damage an irreplaceable priceless piece of art? As it turns out, not all that much. This is mainly because of two things- first,
museums and galleries will almost always have insurance to cover any such damage. Second, accidents happen and the people running
the museums understand that. In fact, in nearly every case we could find
of a piece of artwork accidentally being damaged, no charges were pressed by either the museum
or, in some cases, the owner of the art in question. In fact, it appears that the worst that might
happen in such a scenario is that you’ll get banned from the museum. For example, consider the case of Nick Flynn,
a man who in 2006 tripped over his shoelace while walking around the Fitzwilliam Museum
in Cambridge and knocked over three 17th century vases worth about ÂŁ175,000 (~$225,000). Flynn noted of the experience, I snagged my shoelace, missed the step and
crash, bang, wallop. There were a million pieces of high quality
Qing ceramics lying around underneath me… Although [I knew] the vase would break I didn’t
imagine it would be loose and crash into the other two. I’m sure I only hit the first one and that
must have flown across the windowsill and hit the next one, which then hit the other,
like a set of dominos. I can say with my hand on my heart that it
was not deliberate … it was just my Norman Wisdom moment, just one of those unbelievably
unlucky things that can sometimes happen. The museum official’s response was to merely
send him a letter advising Flynn “not to visit the museum again in the near future.” Yes, he didn’t even technically get banned;
just politely asked to abstain from visiting for a while. In fact, the museum didn’t even identify
Flynn to the public to spare him the embarrassment of being known as the guy who tripped and
knocked over three vases that, before encountering Mr. Flynn, had managed to survive about four
centuries and a full six decades sitting on those very windowsills. (We only know his name because British tabloids
tracked him down after the fact.) In another example, this one in 2015, a 12
year old boy tripped while visiting a Taiwanese art exhibition. During his fall forward, he managed to punch
a hole through a 350 year old painting, Flowers, by Paola Porpora, valued at about $1,500,000… (You can watch the video of this happening
here.) The organisers of the exhibition went out
of their way to assure the boy and his family that they wouldn’t be liable to pay any
damages nor in any trouble legally. In fact, one of the organisers, Sun Chi-hsuan,
publicly insisted that the boy wasn’t to blame. In yet another case, in 2010, a young woman,
who as per usual with these sorts of things went unnamed publicly, damaged a $130,000,000
Picasso painting called The Actor by falling into it during an art class. The result was a six inch tear in the lower
right-hand corner. In this specific case, the museum officials
were more concerned with reporting that the woman was uninjured than the fact that her
accident had potentially wiped away half the painting’s value. So those are pure accidents. What about more negligent cases? All evidence would seem to indicate that museums
and galleries similarly seem hesitant to do anything to the patron in question. Beyond countless selfie-related accidental
destruction of art that has become something of a frequent occurrence in recent years,
there is the case of a clock made by artist James Borden that hung in Columbia Pennsylvania’s
National Watch and Clock Museum for over two decades before being destroyed. How did it meet its end? An elderly couple began touching and pulling
on its various bits, seemingly trying to see what the clock looked like when working; this
ultimately caused the clock to come crashing down. (You can watch a video of this here.) The museum chose not to press any charges
nor seek compensation for the damages. In fact, as in other examples, they didn’t
even berate the individuals in the press, choosing not even to name them at all. That said, we did find one exception to this
“no fault” negligent destruction of art general rule. This happened when a tourist scaled the facade
of a Portuguese train station to take a selfie with an 1890 statue of Dom Sebastiao, resulting
in the statue’s destruction when said tourist accidentally knocked the statue over and it
shattered on the ground below. The unnamed man was later charged with destruction
of public property. As for the non-public, even in cases where
museum or gallery staff damage or destroy the art, the individual usually gets off with
only a slap on the wrist if it truly was an honest accident. For example, in 2000, some porters at the
Bond Street auction house accidentally put a painting by artist Lucian Freud, valued
at £100,000 (about $130,000), into a crushing machine… The painting was stored in a large wooden
box, which the porters assumed was empty and put out with the rest of the trash. The auction house assured papers that the
porters wouldn’t lose their jobs over the matter, and that it was an honest mistake. In another case, an unnamed cleaning lady
tossed a bunch of modern art valued at about $15,000 into the garbage in 2014. To be fair to the cleaning lady, the “art”
in question, created by modernist Paul Branca, was a bunch of cardboard boxes haphazardly
strewn across the floor of a section of the gallery (modern art everybody). Again, no action was taken against the cleaner. (We can only hope Mr. Branca was on his game
that day, and he simply took the opportunity to go full meta-on it, displaying his former
cardboard box art now in the garbage bin, perhaps even increasing its value in that
case…) All this said, while it appears most museums,
galleries and even artists will take the destruction or damage of their work in good humor if done
accidentally (even if there was a fair bit of negligence involved), the same can’t
be said if the damage is malicious. In these cases, the museum can and will press
charges, and one might expect a bit of jail time. For instance, in the aforementioned vase-smashing
story, sometime later there was some thought that Flynn had smashed the vases on purpose
for the publicity of it (given his going out of his way to give interviews about it and
some of his comments therein, despite that the museum had so carefully avoided assigning
any blame or mentioning his name). As a result, he was eventually detained for
a night, though noted he was treated very well while under arrest, with the police simply
trying to determine if he’d done it on purpose. Once they decided it had indeed been an accident,
he was let go with no further consequences. In another instance, one Andrew Shannon punched
a Monet painting, Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sail Boat, then worth about ÂŁ7m (about
$9 million). He later claimed he tripped and fell and it
was an accident, but security footage clearly showed him intentionally punching the painting. When he was detained by security guards, a
can of paint stripper was also found in his pocket. He was given a five year prison sentence. This brings us to perhaps the most obvious
question that arises from all this- why is such valuable, and often irreplaceable, art
stored in such a way that people can just walk up to it and damage it (whether accidentally
or not). Well one reason is cost- placing every painting,
sculpture and fresco behind protective glass or under the careful watch of a burly guard
is expensive. Contrary to the value of the pieces they sometimes
contain, museums and art galleries often aren’t swimming in money. A second, perhaps more important reason, is
that it would disrupt the experience of viewing the art in question; ensuring the art can
be properly appreciated is of tantamount importance to those running various museums and galleries. It’s noted that said institutions have to
constantly strike a balance between “keeping works of art accessible to the public, and
protecting them at the same time”. Such a balance necessitates a degree of trust
be placed in the public to not paw at the priceless works of art on display and to otherwise
be careful around them.
tl;dw - nothing... Unless your an omega level asshole
Video could be summed up as: nothing bad happens. No really. Nothing. I'm serious. Nothing. Alright, if you straight up punch a painting... Nothing
Presentation style too annoying. Move to DEFCON 3.
It kind of makes sense that museums aren't concerned about the value of the art works since they generally don't sell them, just display them.
Cardboard boxes on the floor is art. I .. would like to see it.
I can imagine the pieces being well insured