Boy, 12, gums up pricey DIA artwork
You might think that a museum wouldn’t have to tell visitors not to stick chewing gum on the art. But you would be wrong — as the Detroit Institute of Arts just found out. At the DIA on Friday, a mischievous 12-year-old boy visiting the museum with a school group took a piece of barely chewed Wrigley’s Extra Polar Ice out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler’s 1963 abstract painting “The Bay,” damaging one of the most important modern paintings in the museum’s collection and a landmark picture in the artist’s output. Though the picture, acquired by the DIA in 1965 and worth an estimated $1.5 million, is expected to make a full recovery, the episode reinforces just how vulnerable priceless works of art remain when displayed publicly — and what can happen when common sense takes a backseat to impulsive delinquency.
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