A woman in Florida has lived out our worst nightmares after she accidentally smashed a Jeff Koons balloon dog sculpture worth $61,000 while wandering through an art exhibition.
Per the ABC, the incident happened on Thursday at the VIP opening night of the Art Wynwood art fair where a range of contemporary and pop art was showcased. An unnamed art collector allegedly tapped the Jeff Koons sculpture to see if it was a real balloon animal, which caused it to fall off its display plinth and shatter into smithereens on the concrete floor.
It’s quite literally my top fear whenever I’m in a gallery surrounded by priceless art. If this was me — not that I would ever touch the artwork — I would simply walk out of the gallery and straight into the nearest body of water, never to be seen again.
Miami Art Fair visitor accidentally smashes a #JeffKoons ballon dog sculpture. pic.twitter.com/zso9pAop2W
— 🧀 NYcheesy (@NYcheesy) February 19, 2023
Artist and art collector Stephen Gamson claimed in an Instagram post that he saw the whole ordeal happen in front of his eyes and said he had offered to buy the now-destroyed art.
“I was at the VIP art opening of Art Wynwood as I was looking the art, I pointed to a Jeff Koons balloon dog sculpture,” he wrote.
“This woman knocked it over. I actually witnessed the whole thing. It shattered into a thousand pieces. One of the most crazy things I’ve ever seen.
“Anyway, I tried to purchase the broken sculpture. It has a really cool story.”
Knowing the art biz, the shattered version of Koons’ balloon dog sculpture is probably going to be worth a shitload more than it originally was, so I hope Gamson has deep pockets for this one. Maybe it was performance art, maybe it was someone trying to pull a Banksy and create something new through total destruction.
Either way, Bel-Air Fine Art advisor Bénédicte Caluch told the Miami Herald that insurance would cover the damage done by the accident.
But the sheer knowledge that someone fully decimated an expensive piece of art by knocking it over at a fancy art night has made me feel deeply unwell from the second-hand mortifying embarrassment. That’s more than enough for a Monday afternoon, thank you very much.
