Museumgoers Accidentally Break Fragile Crystal-Covered Chair Inspired by Vincent van Gogh Painting
Security footage shows the two museumgoers pretending to sit on the artwork as they pose for photos at the Palazzo Maffei in Italy. After the piece’s front legs bucked, the pair left the museum
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At an Italian art museum, two visitors recently attempted to photograph themselves with a chair-shaped sculpture made of crystals—with disastrous results.
First, a woman hovered over the chair while a man took her photo. But when the man attempted to strike the same pose, he fell back onto the piece, breaking its front legs.
The culprits hurried out of the room and left the Palazzo Maffei in Verona without reporting the damage. But the incident was caught on camera.
“It wasn’t such a brilliant thought to sit on an artwork,” Vanessa Carlon, the museum’s director, tells the New York Times’ Claire Moses.
Carlon says the incident highlights just how far people will go to get a good photo, as well as their flagrant lack of accountability. “These two people decided to escape,” she adds. “That was the behavior that really offended us.”
The artwork, titled Van Gogh’s Chair, is by the Italian artist Nicola Bolla, who’s known for intricate, eye-catching sculptures made of unique materials, such as playing cards, according to a statement from the museum. His most famous series, Vanitas, is a collection of realistic sculptures either covered in or made of materials like Swarovski crystals—including a skull, a toilet and a noose and stool.
Bolla modeled the crystal-covered chair after the subject of an 1888 painting by the Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. As Carlon tells the Italian magazine Fanpage’s Giusy Dente, Bolla’s piece is light and ethereal—and because it lacks an internal structure, it’s also very fragile.
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It was displayed on a small platform, and signs in both Italian and English warned visitors not to touch or sit on the work. The two museumgoers waited for a security guard to leave the room before accidentally breaking the piece.
“It was an idiotic thing to do,” Bolla tells Fanpage, per a translation by Agence France-Presse. Still, the artist sees a “positive side” to the event. “It’s like a kind of performance,” he adds. “Ordinary people can do it too, not just artists.”
Bolla’s art has been vandalized before. “Probably my works seem so true and so real that people think they can appropriate them,” he tells Fanpage, per a translation by the Times.
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While the incident took place in April, the museum released the security footage (with the couple’s faces blurred) earlier this month, once the artwork had been repaired and put back on display.
“It looks the same, but once an artwork is damaged it’s not really the same,” Carlon tells the Times, adding that its newfound fame may make up for its lost value.
Museum officials declined to provide the artwork’s estimated value, according to BBC News’ Joshua Cheetham. Carlon tells the broadcaster that most museumgoers are well-behaved. But at the same time, she wants to emphasize that “anyone should enter art places—or museums or churches, wherever art is displayed—in a more respectful way.”
