In 2005 my sister and I built a replica, in gingerbread, of a well known local church. It was on display in the cafe where I work. The cafe is located in the public library. The art galery lent a display case with a top over it.
The cnclosed display case was to keep people from handling it. The top covering, according to the gallery employee, was needed because even with “Don’t touch” signs they still have to deal with people who reach over the top, thinking “Don’t touch” means "Please, touch.
I had a nice long post written, ripping into museum visitor ‘art man-handlers’… but what good does it do? Venting might make me feel better, but it won’t keep the next idiot from grabbing art like its make out of their kids LEGOs.
How historical and valuable objects manage to survive these idiots to last hundreds of years, I’ll Never know…
Museums all over the world have incredibly valuable and often fragile pieces within easy reach of visitors. The working assumption is that the vast majority of people who visit such places have sufficient functioning neurons to understand and obey the “Please Do Not Touch the Exhibits” signs.
And over at SFMOMA in San Francisco, a Warhol painting had to be removed from display because someone touched it. At least this appeared to be an accident where someone tripped and reflexively put out their hands.
From what I’ve heard, no damage was really done, but the painting has to be cleaned as the long-term effects of skin oils is not beneficial.
A few years ago a guy tripped on his shoelace and smashed 3 vases in Cambridge. The vases had been sitting on a window sill for 60 years and no-one had touched them.
Luckily they were able to glue them all back together.
I used to be a substitute teacher, and went with a group of kids to a history museum in New Jersey. They had Aaron Burr’s cradle. One of the students tried to grab it.
I was walking through the National Gallery of Art in D.C. while reading a map and I hit my head on the protruding part of “Lever No. 3”. Oops. It made a loud, comical “bong-ong-ong” type noise, but I don’t think I damaged it.
Years ago, we went to the J. Paul Getty museum in southern California. This museum has Van Gogh’s famous Irises painting. It was, as you may imagine, closely guarded, but wasn’t behind any particular barrier. We chatted with the guard, who told us that soon after the museum bought and hung the painting, a woman had leaned forward and scratched at the heavily swirled paint and chipped some off. Painting restorers had to carefully affix the paint chips back onto the painting and that was when the painting was assigned its own guard. This was back in the late 80’s, and I don’t know if they keep the painting behind a barrier of some sort nowadays. I hope so.
Thank you! It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun as well. The church itself deserves some credit, as it was their office that furnished me with an old aerial photo of the building. That allowed a fine view of the different parts of the roof, and how they went together.
Wanted: Art Restoration Specialist.
Must have years of experience, good references, be able to work with very small fragments and be able to control “The Righteous Fist Of Death”.
Inquire with curator.
