“Please do not touch the artwork”.
Every now and then we are reminded why these signs are still needed in galleries around the world.
Art lovers in Miami watched in horror Thursday night when a collector accidentally knocked down a $42,000 sculpture by US pop artist Jeff Koons.
She tapped it with her finger, witnesses said at the event.
The statue – one of Koons’ iconic dog balloons – shattered into tiny pieces and had to be swept into dustpans by gallery staff.
The accident happened during the exclusive VIP opening night of Art Wynwood, a contemporary art fair held annually in Miami, Florida.
Local artist Stephen Gamson told the Miami Herald he was admiring the sculpture when an “elderly woman” tapped it and knocked it off its pedestal.
At first he wondered if it was part of a performance (Banksy, anyone?) but quickly realized it had been an accident.
“When this thing fell on the ground, it was like a car crash that draws a huge crowd onto the freeway,” Gamson told the newspaper.
Luckily for the woman, the piece is insured, said Bénédicte Caluch, an art consultant for Bel-Air Fine Art Galleries, who represents the sculpture.
“It was an event!” Ms. Caluch told the Miami Herald. “Everyone came to see what happened.”
She added that the unnamed perpetrator of the damage was an art collector.
“Life just stopped for 15 minutes with everyone around you,” Cédric Boero, who also works for Bel-Air Fine Art Galleries, told the New York Times.
He added that a colleague spoke to the woman, who said she was “very sorry” and “just wanted to leave”.
The sculpture was part of a limited edition that has now shrunk from 799 to 798.
“It’s a good thing for collectors,” Mr. Boero told the Times, laughing.
Jeff Koons (left) speaks to a fan at an event in 2021, with one of his blue Balloon Dog statues in the background
Despite being fragmented into thousands of pieces, there is still interest in purchasing the destroyed sculpture.
Mr Gamson offered to buy it straight away because, as he said on his Instagram account, it “has a really cool story”.
Jeff Koons, 68, has not commented on the incident.
His series of Balloon Dog sculptures are among the most recognized works of contemporary art and have sold for tens of millions of dollars.
Some are huge – up to 3m tall – but this ill-fated one was just a pup, measuring 40cm tall.
They’ve graced galleries around the world and were further iconicized by Jay-Z in 2017, when the rapper worked directly with Koons to create a 40-foot long inflatable balloon dog as a stage prop.
In 2019, Koons made history when his Rabbit sculpture fetched $91.1million (£71million) at auction – the highest-ever sale for a living artist.
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