Boy Sticks Gum on $1.5 Million Painting at Museum
WGAL:
The Detroit Institute of Arts is stuck with having to repair a painting worth $1.5 million.
It has to remove a stain left by a wad of gum stuck on the painting by a 12-year-old visitor.
It happened Friday. Museum officials said the boy was with a group from Holly Academy in Oakland County, Mich., when he took the gum out of his mouth and stuck it on Helen Frankenthaler’s 1963 abstract painting “The Bay.”
The gum didn’t stick to the fiber of the canvas, but left a stain the size of a quarter. Museum experts are researching the chemicals in the gum to decide how to clean the painting.
My first reaction when I read the headline was, I’m glad it wasn’t my child! Then I read that it was a twelve year old boy, and thought, My child will never be so ill-behaved. *fingers crossed* But really, how in the world would you go about disciplining a child is such a situation!?
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:06 pm
Eeek!
My kid would be the one to pull it off and stick it in her mouth.
March 3rd, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Being 12 years old, he is old enough to work it off. The punishment should involve volunteer work fro the museum. And significant enough that he won’t forget his lesson anytime soon. Maybe scraping gum off the bottom of the benches???