This isn’t a question of absolutes, properly thought of, so extreme examples aren’t convincing. People and particularly kids are supposed to be specially taught to be quiet and orderly in libraries, or museums which it seems more than one poster thought this must have been.
I would say a community center is actually pretty far over on the scale of where you’d expect kids to run around a little compared to a library or museum.
But it is a judgment call. The point about attractive nuisance is just that some people, maybe kidless or very superior feeling parents I’m not sure, seem to offer ‘the parents should have supervised’ as the answer to everything. But while parents in general should supervise, like Aspidistra said there’s a question of practical standards given that kids are kids. And every kid under the continuous vision of their parents at all times in public is less practical than don’t put expensive art pieces unprotected in places with a relatively low expectation of specially quiet and well mannered behavior by kids like a community center, as contrasted to say a library or museum.
Well often they are in subrogation suits with lawyers representing another insurance company … amazingly one often wins more than the other … and often there is some share of blame allocated to each side.
In the tape it is clear that the sculpture is in an area which has many preschool aged children traveling past it and other children are seen climbing up to touch the sculpture.
Appropriate supervision of a preschooler in a trafficked area of a community center is not the arm’s length supervision of being in the pool. Visual contact is reasonable but being within visual contact would not have preventing this level of contact with the artwork.
It is clear that the boy did not in fact climb up on the sculpture but hugged from a level below half way up the actual bust.
It does not in that video appear that the bust was secured to the base in any way.
I’ve been to lots of art museums and no serious museum would have a fragile piece that was as easy to topple over as this one seemed to be.
95% negligence to the city. 4% to whoever loaned it to the city for not instructing them on how to safely display it. 1% maybe to the family. And that is for the cost of repairing the work, not for its replacement.
If there are other kids climbing on it, it is reasonable for the kid to think they could do so, too. I expect things that are dangerous to have signs or people around preventing climbing. Assuming the podium is separate, I would think it would be designed to prevent any sort of “climbing.” And, yes, there are better ways to secure things.
And saying that a 6 figure bill is just “an expensive lesson” seems rather privileged to me. I would actually guess that it would be hard for them to recover that much from most people, since they can’t make you homeless, or garnish wages over a certain amount.
I’m with the folks who emphasize that this is a community center, not an art gallery. It’s a place where children are expected to be running around. (Although , yes, with supervision.)
I don’t know if the sculpture meets the legal definition of “attractive nuisance” (like, say, an unfenced swimming pool).
But I do think there should be a greater expectation that the community center management would realize that with all those kids running around-- “this is why we can’t have nice things”.
Here’s my test case for the court to consider : ask "Would an art gallery place that sculpture in its lobby? Answer is Yes.
Now ask “would an elementary school place that sculpture in its lobby?” I’m pretty sure the answer is “no”.
A community center is more like an elementary school than an art gallery.
Some years ago my sister and I built a special gingerbread model of a well-known local church. My boss had us place it on display in his cafe, where I work as the baker. The cafe is located in the public library. Lots of people and lots of kids.
The art gallery from the library loaned us a display podium, with a plexiglass shield all around, and a top to cover it. They said that signs that say “Please, don’t tough” seem to some folks to mean, “Please touch” and that if there are protective sides folks will reach up and over the top to get at displayed art.
To have a valuble sculpture, with so little protection, was stupid, in Community center anyway.
Hugged?
It looked more like the kid was feeling-up the statue. The little perv could be hit for molestation.
On the other hand, maybe the parents will sue because now he thinks if he touches a woman’s boobs she will break into a million pieces (and won’t stop trying to do it again).
Like others I watched the video and I see a statue that didn’t just have one kid touching when he shouldn’t, but had a bunch of kids touching it and climbing on it. It was just a matter of time before something happened, the centre is lucky a child didn’t get hurt there.
And like others I call bullshit on the unsupervised parts. Yes, watch your kids. No, that doesn’t mean 24/7 eyes on target helicopter parenting.
Watch the video in the OP. You can see the boy step up onto the display at :30. Then his dad calls him away. Then there’s a jump cut in the video.
At :45 on the tape, the kid comes back and steps onto the display again. He puts his arms around the figure and you can see him looking down for a place to put his foot so he can step up. He’s not hugging the figure (or copping a feel :rolleyes: ). He’s got his arms around the figure so he can pull himself up. That’s when the sculpture gives way - while he’s got his weight on it.
This is incorrect. The sculpture didn’t tip over the second he touched it. It was after he put his weight on it and tried to climb higher.
That doesn’t mean it would be good idea for you try and scale one.
It might not be reparable. Not every work of art is. It depends on how badly the armature was damaged, probably.
And, for that matter, it might not be replaceable. It took years to make. They can’t just run down to Pottery Barn for a new one.
Oh for fuck’s sake! They were fuckin’ stupid to put the thing in the common room of a community center for kids. I can literally buy a Ferrari Spider with under 10,000 miles for less than that gaudy sculpture is supposedly worth. This whole thing is preposterous. The kid’s parents don’t owe anyone shit.
FWIW I’d be totally fine - and I bet many other people would be as well - with a reasonable request for compensation if my child had damaged something valuable that the owners had taken appropriate care to secure. “Appropriate care” being at minimum some sort of barrier that takes a child more than five seconds to navigate, and “reasonable” being “of the sort of value you’d expect for a thouroughfare in a building where your business model caters to families with small children”
If the kid was worrying at it for ten minutes and they get handed a bill for a couple of hundred then sure, pay up.
When I hear a phrase like “The kid was unsupervised!” or “The parents should have been watching him/her!” then I know that the speaker is someone who doesn’t have kids, hasn’t spent any time around kids, and doesn’t remember what it was like to be a kid.
A fragile artwork that can be toppled by a small child shouldn’t be in a COMMUNITY CENTER, much less a museum. Whoever set up that exhibit is an idiot.
Those parents should send that bill back to the insurance company with a photo of the kid giving them the finger.
So, if I understand this correctly, the $132K is what they claimed on their tax as the “value” of the donation?
Then the city insures it for $132K and puts it out somewhere where they know it will be broken?
First the insurance company says “Whatever, you pay the inflated premium, we pretend to insure”, then “You must be joking, let’s see what the courts reckon the real value is”
I put the parents as innocent victims of this scam.
First of all, the Community Center seems to me to be far and away the most at-fault party. They displayed a fragile piece of art in a heavily-travelled public space without, apparently, any thought to the securing of the piece.
The behavior of the kids is pretty much typical of kids. It’s their job to explore the world and find out how things work. Unless you subscribe to the idea that kids should be locked in a rubber room until they come of age, you need to be aware that anywhere you have kids, there is the likelihood of accidents happening. It’s the adults’ job to kid-proof when necessary.
And, even if you think the parents are at fault, where exactly are they supposed to get $132,00? Very few people have that kind of money available. Are you going to screw up the family’s financial position for the next couple of decades for a kids-being-kids accident? Throw the dad into debtor’s prison?
In the article it is mentioned that “It will be up to the insurance companies to get this worked out.” What insurance are the parents supposed to have? Does your typical home-owners policy cover damage done by children when in public spaces? Color me ignorant, but I am skeptical. Or are they supposed to have special “damage my kids might do” insurance?
In my mind, this is what the insurance company is paid for. If an earthquake had destroyed the artwork, would the insurance company try to bill Mother Nature for the damage? It is the insurance companies responsibility to assess the proper premium for anything which they insure. And, they could even have evaluated the installation and advised on proper protection to prevent damages. It would appear that they did not.
I do feel bad for the artist, who supposedly lost a couple of years worth of work. (I have my doubts about this as well.) But, if he still owns the artwork, hopefully any payment the insurance company makes will be to him.
The answer is YES! The entire family should be sent to the Marshalsea, and maybe in a few decades’ time they will have earned sufficient funds - perhaps by picking oakum or boiling tallow - to at least partially reimburse this sculptor whom their brat has so grievously wronged.
I see a top heavy sculpture not attached to its base in any way easily toppled over, narrowly missing landing on a child.
Our reads of whether or not he was trying to climb or pull up onto it, or looking for a foothold, differ … and do not matter. (We can agree, I hope, that his arms around the bust were around the waist of it, not the upper half.)
A preschooler (and a typical five year old boy weighs 40 pounds give or take) would not have been able to tip over that sculpture by even pulling at its base if there had been even any reasonable attempt to attach it to the base (which should be weighted).
If you put a Faberge egg on a table next to playground, near the swing set, don’t come crying that some out of control unsupervised preschooler picked it up and accidentally dropped it. Parents should be watching their kids!!!
There actually are guidelines for how to display art in public spaces. Pretty all of them include that the work must not present a safety risk.
Maybe the USA is different, or lawyers need something to do, but in civilized countries you cannot legally touch kids under 14, and are limited in suing people under 18. The kid broke the thing, not the parents, so under most jurisdictions they are not liable to pay, if if said kid is an insufferable snotty little brat.
What would the lawyers have done if the kid got hurt when the thing broke? Yup, all over the community center like a cheap suit. And, apart from the legal issues, the community center was seriously at fault for putting up a piece of glass in an area full of children, not necessarily closely supervised. If the artist thinks it is so valuable, treat it with the respect is deserves and put it in an art gallery. Oh, and did the community center have alarm systems guarding this valuable piece of (f)art?
Last but not least, art never has any value apart from what people will pay for it. The artist is, well, a bullshit artist when it comes to pricing his or her work.