When bad things happen to good museums

Surveillance footage of the
Weinstein Gallery theft

Perhaps it's my background at a fine institution that suddenly found itself the focus of this kind of attention in 2006, but I can't help noticing when museums and galleries hit the news for the 'wrong' reasons.



A week ago, the National Gallery in London discovered that one of its Poussins had been defaced by an idiot with a spray-can - a nasty bit of vandalism that opened up a bizarre debate about whether free admission is to blame (clue: it isn't). Right here in San Francisco, a Picasso sketch was lifted right off the wall at the Weinstein Gallery and into a waiting taxi back on 5 July, with police tracking it down 48 hours later (ample time for gags about the real mystery being how our highbrow art thief managed to find a cab driver that would actually wait outside a store). Mere days later, the Contemporary Jewish Museum was forced into apology-mode after a lesbian couple were ejected from their current Gertrude Stein exhibition for holding hands. (Jokes about that one proved irrelevant, considering.)

It's the stuff of publicity folks' nightmares, yet it seems that almost every major museum or gallery has faced down a PR crisis of some kind in the fast five years. Plus, as I discovered in my previous press office role, there's almost guaranteed to be at least one journalist researching a 'famous art accidents' article at any given time (why I didn't just refer them to each other I don't know.) But why do art-related snafus - be they thefts, breakages or dubious visitor policies - so intrigue the media and public alike?

On a base level, it's got to be the common delight at a good old-fashioned debacle, the kind of schadenfreude that accompanies any grand mistake. It's only natural that interest is particularly heightened when it befalls a figure or institution perceived as somehow elevated or 'high-brow'. It's the same reason we delight in the undoing of politicians, or royals - the distance between unimpeachable and impeached is that much greater, and even though so much of a modern museum's marketing efforts are directed into dispelling this perception, traditional notions of lofty, aloof institutions can still endure, however inaccurate.

I also have a more optimistic (albeit shakier) theory. Isn't it possible that we care so much about what happens in our museums and galleries because we all feel a keen sense of ownership, or collective culture? To borrow from Woody Guthrie, this art is your art - and if a museum contains your history, surely it's natural to take a righteous interest when someone puts their elbow through it? Maybe it's an extension of the horrified little lurch we'd all do if someone came round to our house and started juggling our Fabergé eggs. Maybe it's not a love of scandal, it's a serious concern for our shared culture.

Or perhaps I'm just indulging in some wishful thinking, and it really is just about expensive things breaking. What do you think?