The next time you step back to take that selfie, especially if you’re in an area crammed with expensive objects, please check your surroundings. A visitor of the 14th Factory in Los Angeles learned that lesson the hard way as she destroyed art valued at $200,000 trying to get the perfect vanity shot in an exhibit.
The mishap, which took place three weeks ago, left three sculptures in the exhibit “Hypercaine” by artist Simon Birch “permanently damaged” and the visitor with a lot of explaining to do.
The security footage shows the visitor in the top left of the frame sitting or kneeling down, then leaning against a display. She quickly learned the object was not a load-bearing element as the tower toppled into another, then another, then another, until 25% of the exhibit was scattered across the floor.
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No word on what the negligent woman’s fate is, but as we’ve addressed before, these sorts of accidents happen in museums, and more often than not, the visitors are let off the hook with little more than a cloud of shame hanging over their heads.
While the accident is no doubt distressing to the artist and the exhibitor, it’s hard not to appreciate the irony in the first few words of the exhibit’s description as provided by the 14th Factory.
“Inside a serene space, singular objects rest on plinths: these are crowns, or at least some semblance of what a crown might be, presented as precious trophies or boons. Some are classic in form, intricately crafted while others are very simple in design, as though rendered from a child’s drawing. Others have more elaborate forms: alien, hybrid, they are at times even contorted into inhibiting devices, somewhere between a crown and a mask. Some are fashioned of precious materials like gold or silver, some of marble; others of more humble material like wood, nylon, scrap metal, or dried herbs and flowers. These are variously imagined forms of the goods of desire that we journeyers hope to gain, the boon that awaits us when we have come through the battle. Flanking the crown room is a small, intimate space, inhabited by a collection of actual meteorite stones, modest in appearance but holding within them the secrets of the universe.”
Should you want to check out what’s left of the exhibit during its monthlong limited run, you can still purchase tickets (somehow not marked down 25%) here.
If you’re not able to make the trip, perhaps you can at least muster some perverse appreciation that your day is (hopefully) going better than this lady’s did.
