[MSN] Museum Apologizes for the Destruction of Two Artworks

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Museum Apologizes for the Destruction of Two Artworks

PARIS, Sept. 7 — The president of the Georges Pompidou Center offered the museum’s “solemn apologies” on Thursday for the destruction of two works by American artists that it had borrowed for its recent exhibition “Los Angeles: 1955-1985.” He said the Pompidou accepted full responsibility for the accidents.

“We are dismayed to be unable to return them, by their irretrievable loss,” the center’s president, Bruno Racine, said at a news conference focusing on its investigation into the accidents. “It is truly heartbreaking for us.”

A 1971 wall sculpture by Peter Alexander was destroyed when it fell from a museum wall shortly before the show opened at the Pompidou on March 8, and a 1967 wall relief by Craig Kauffman tumbled to the floor during public visiting hours on July 15.

Since the accidents were first reported in The Los Angeles Times last month, the museum has sought to counter claims that it does not take proper care of the artworks it borrows.

Mr. Racine pledged Thursday that in the future the center would make public “without delay” any serious damage to a work, and that it would publish annual statistics on all incidents, even minor ones. “The Pompidou Center is determined to show that these incidents are unfortunate exceptions,” he said.

Mr. Racine said the Pompidou’s investigation had concluded that Mr. Alexander’s work, a vertical bar of cast polyester resin, fell off the wall because of a misunderstanding between a restorer and an installer.

“The destruction of Peter Alexander’s work may thus be attributed to a clearly identifiable human error,” he said, “an error for which the Pompidou Center bears sole responsibility.” The Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York, which owned the work, has since been paid its insured value of $28,000.

Mr. Racine said investigators had been unable to establish why Mr. Kauffman’s wall relief, lent by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, fell off the wall. He said it had been hung according to the Los Angeles museum’s specifications in the presence of a museum representative.

The only plausible hypotheses, he said, were an error in installation or a disturbance caused by a visitor. He added that the insured value of the work, $60,000, would soon be paid to the lending museum.

Mr. Racine said that the Pompidou had invited the artists to remake the works at the center’s expense, but that they had not yet responded.

http://www.nytimes.com/