World News
| News | Sports | Business | Weather | Opinions | Archives | E-mail Us |

Tuesday, May. 18, 1999

Picasso piece slashed at Dutch museum

Officials say attack highlights masterpieces' vulnerability to vandalism

Associated Press

   AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - It can happen so fast, not even an alert security guard can prevent it: A vandal tosses acid at a masterpiece or unsheathes a knife and carves the canvas into ribbons.
   Museum officials were stunned by a weekend slashing attack at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art that severely damaged a Picasso valued at up to $7.5 million. The vandalism by an escaped mental patient also has curators conceding little can be done to protect artworks - short of turning galleries into glass-cased fortresses.
   "You can come in. You can look. And unfortunately, you can also whip out a knife and cut," a somber Rudi Fuchs, director of the Stedelijk Museum, said Monday.
   Dutch police were questioning the accused slasher, who escaped from a psychiatric clinic in Utrecht, about 35 miles southeast of Amsterdam. He hopped a train to the capital, bought a ticket to the Stedelijk and allegedly used a razor knife to cut a huge, ragged hole in the middle of Picasso's "Woman Nude Before Garden," a 1956 oil on canvas.
   Museum and city officials reacted with outrage to Sunday afternoon's attack at the Stedelijk, which houses a world-renowned collection including five other Picassos. At the time of the attack, 2,500 visitors were passing through the gallery.
   It was the third time in the past 18 months that a vandal has struck the museum with disastrous results.
   In March, another man who described himself as schizophrenic and psychotic pleaded guilty to charges that he used a switchblade in 1997 to slash a work by American abstract impressionist Barnett Newman. Earlier in 1997, another vandal was sentenced to 10 months in prison for spraying a green dollar sign on a painting by Russian avant-garde artist Kazimir Malevich.
   Restoration experts were able to repair those paintings, but Fuchs said he isn't sure the prized Picasso he described as "superb and marvelous" will be salvageable. The museum, which bought the painting in 1981 for $950,000, is insured for the damage.
   "Everyone is very shocked. I find it horrible what happened, and I can't believe it has happened again," said Saskia Bruines, Amsterdam's councilor for culture. "We must step up security. We must ask ourselves what we could be doing that we haven't already done."
   

Post your comments on this story in our forums.

---

  © 1999 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.