Clumsy

Following on from the news of the smashed totem, Laura Barnett details other disasters to befall artworks, this time at the hands of gallery and auction staff, including a Lucian Freud drawing that Sotheby's put through a shredder.

Photography in art galleries: the dark side

Another day, another story about an art work accidentally smashed by a visitor to an art gallery.* This time it's a 9ft tall ceramic totem by Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez, selected by Tracey Emin for the show she has curated at the Royal Academy.

The bit of the story that stands out:

Pictures of the incident's aftermath were taken by onlookers, something the RA took a dim view of to the point of threatening legal action against one person who had taken a picture of it.

*cp. for eg. the Qing vases at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2006, or, for a bit of light relief, the mogul who put his elbow through his Picasso in the same year.

Image: Tracey Emin with the then-unsmashed sculptures, daylife.com