Museum Security Guard Adds Eyes to Painting's Faceless Figures

[Zorro]

The guard at a museum in Russia has been suspended after he used a pen to draw on “Three Figures,” an avant-garde painting from the 1930s.

A detail from “Three Figures,” by Anna Leporskaya, after a security guard penned eyes on two of the faces in the painting.Credit...The Art Newspaper Russia, via Associated Press

A security guard who recently vandalized a 1930s-era painting during his first shift at a museum in Russia has been suspended for what a top official at the museum called “a stupid mistake.”

In December, the guard at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Yekaterinburg, Russia, used a ballpoint pen to draw eyes on two of the faceless subjects of “Three Figures,” which the artist Anna Leporskaya painted from 1932 to 1934. The painting, which was on loan to the center from a museum in Moscow, was part of a temporary exhibition of avant-garde artwork.

The Yeltsin center, which is dedicated to Russia’s first elected president, did not announce the vandalism at the time. But after a report of the incident last month by The Art Newspaper Russia drew international attention, the center said in a statement that “there was an accident.”

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Alexander Drozdov, the executive director of the center, identified the guard as Alexander Vasilyev and said he had been suspended during a police investigation of the vandalism. The guard is employed by a private security company and had been working his first shift at the museum.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/16/world/europe/russian-painting-eyes-security-guard.html

Quite a way to start your first day on the job...

[Nevilledog]

1. Only day.