Woman Trying to Take Selfie Damages $200,000 Worth of Art
If you’re going to buck social norms at a museum or gallery and take a selfie, at least make sure your footing is secure. A visitor to the 14th Factory in Los Angeles, California, learned this the hard way when she damaged $200,000 worth of art during a photo session.
According to Mashable, the woman was attempting to take a selfie while kneeling in front of a row of sculptures, which were displayed on pedestals, when she lost her balance and knocked into the pedestal directly behind her, causing a domino effect. At least 10 pedestals were knocked over as a result and, according to the museum, three sculptures were “permanently damaged.”
According to the pop-up art exhibition space’s website, “the 14th Factory is a monumental, multiple-media, socially engaged art and documentary experience conceived by the Hong Kong-based British artist Simon Birch …where Birch and his 20 creative collaborators work and manufacture their art, creating an ever-changing immersive environment of 14 interlinked spaces comprised of video, installation, sculpture, paintings and performance.”
Mashable identifies the exhibit as “Hyperfine,” one that displays a series of crowns. Each crown is uniquely crafted (and thus, we assume, varied in pricing). The description reads, “Some [crowns] 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.”
This is also certainly not the first time that a selfie-taking tourist has damaged art—Yayoi Kusama’s Instagram-bait Infinity Mirrored Room exhibition suffered a similar fate recently. But, at least, damage was only done to the artwork and not the selfie-taker: Earlier this year a tourist was bitten by a crocodile while trying to take a selfie in Thailand, and another woman fell from the highest bridge in California, while trying to snap a photo of herself. Let this be a lesson for all: doing it for the ‘gram can backfire.
Related: Part of a $1 Million Kusama Installation Damaged by Probable Selfie Accident
Watch: How to Take a Selfie Like a Supermodel
