A janitorial staff member at a German museum accidentally destroyed a $1.1 million piece of art over the weekend when they tried to clean a “stain” off the piece.
The cleaner was doing her rounds when she noticed what she thought was a stain on a sculpture at which point she proceeded to clean the “stain.”
The destroyed piece was by the late Martin Kippenberger and is titled When It Starts Dripping from the Ceilings .
Sculpted as a wooden structure with a bowl underneath it is painted to look discolored by dripping water and it was the painted portion that the worker destroyed.
According to the Telegraph a museum representative says “It is now impossible to return it to its original state.”
The museum says the piece will remain on display regardless of the cleaners error in judgment and they also revealed that cleaners have been told in the past to come no closer to 8 inches of a work.
I personally think the cleaner should be fired if they haven’t already, simply asking a curator during regular business hours if a stain was suppose to exist could have avoiding a very expensive mistake. Do you think better measures should have been taken to make sure such mistakes were avoided?
