Why Do Museum Patrons Hurt the Ones They Love?

In a letter responding to Anthony M. Amore’s editorial “No ‘Thomas Crown Affair’” in The New York Times about the recent robbery at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, Georgia Museum of Art guard Ed Tant acknowledged the very real threat posed by thieves, but fingered a very different, less publicized, but more insidiously silent danger to art in museums—museum patrons. After 12 years on the job, Tant describes his primary everyday task as “protecting the art from the art lovers.” From intentional vandalism to accidental encounters with masterpieces, why do museum patrons hurt the ones they love? Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "Why Do Museum Patrons Hurt the Ones They Love?"

How Vandalizing the Tate Rothko Is Desecrating a Grave

Upon hearing news of the vandalizing of Mark Rothko’s 1958 painting Black on Maroon (shown above), a part of me cried out in pain. Few artists cut to the core of what it is to be a human being as Rothko, as testified by the enduring appeal of his paintings, which remain as hypnotic and personal as they were when he took his life more than 40 years ago. A vandal calling himself Vladimir Umanets tells the BBC that he attacked the Tate’s prize painting not as a vandal but as an “artist” carrying on the mission of Duchamp under the theoretical banner of “Yellowism.” Vladimir Umanets, whose name (thanks to Holly Knowlman’s detective work on the Yellowism Facebook page) is an anagram for “I’m true vandalism,” demonstrates “Yellowism” only as a sign of cowardice—an individual or group masquerading as an art movement by damaging the works of the past. Tagging Black on Maroon with a graffiti pen, however, isn’t just art vandalism. In this case, it’s the desecration of a grave. Please come over to Picture This at Big Think to read more of "How Vandalizing the Tate Rothko Is Desecrating a Grave."


[Image: Mark Rothko. Black on Maroon, 1958.]

Hammer Time

Ed Pettit of the Bibliothecary Blog reports that a portrait of Dr. Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England was vandalized by a hammer-wielding patron on August 8th. (I had actually written on this portrait [shown above] as part of my tribute to Reynolds on July 18th.) Fortunately, they believe that they can repair the damage. Rumors that the assailant shouted “I refute it thus!” as he struck, hid the hammer in a pair of enormously large parachute pants, or hummed a medley of the Beatles’ “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “U Can’t Touch This” while waiting for the police are totally untrue and fabricated here for the first time, so feel free to start spreading them around.

Every Parent’s Nightmare

CNN’s home page has footage of a little boy stomping all over a mandala sand painting Buddhist monks had been working on for two days. (The UPI story is here.) A security camera captured all the carnage, which ends when the mother guiltily swoops in and trundles her little urchin away. (The image above is from another group of monks working on a mandala.)

I’m sure that the good Buddhist monks undoubtedly said when they saw what transpired was that it was all part of the transience of this plane of existence. At the end of the painting, they always ceremoniously sweep away the sand. I always wondered if the Buddhists looked forward to that moment of sweeping away, which this incident would have taken from them. It’s kind of like lining up thousands of dominoes and not getting to tip that first one over. What would you pay for the security camera footage of the monks’ expressions when they came in to work that next morning?