Picasso Ripper Showered With Sympathy

John Hudson Jan 25, 2010

On Friday, a woman at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art lost her balance and fell into a Picasso painting causing a six-inch tear in the lower right corner. The piece "The Actor" is a highly-valued work from Picasso's Rose Period, painted between 1904 and 1905. The museum is keeping the woman's name anonymous and says the piece will be repaired for an exhibition later this year.

Far from fretting about the painting, ever-fickle Internet users are more concerned about the unenviable woman who suffered the fall:

Adam Raymond at New York Magazine: "Unless this woman was once pantsed on national TV, this was surely most embarrassing moment of her life. "

IshaSesayCNN: "That woman who fell into the Picasso: I feel for her and the painting. She'll never live it down!"

Longviewer: "Given that she was in an adult ed class, it seems extremely likely that she's an art lover who feels just awful about the accident. What a nightmare!"

A runner: "Who gives a darn about a painting. Is the human being okay?"

iringtwice: "So now we're more intrested in what happen to a piece of canvas with oil paint on it than how the woman is? Was she ok? It's seems we put more value on the painting than the well being of a human being."

Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at jhudson at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire.
John Hudson

Topics: Fine Arts

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