If you thought your tween was clumsy, spare a thought for a 12-year-old Taiwanese boy, who suffered the most epic whoopsie while visiting an art gallery. His fist sank into a painting that happened to be 350 years old and worth an estimated $1.5m.
The painting by Paolo Porpora was an oil called, simply, Flowers, and was part of the Genius exhibition currently showing in Taipei.
The Puma T-shirt-wearing kid saunters past the cordoned painting holding what appears to be a can of pop. But his foot catches, causing him to trip, and hand meets canvas.
Lucky for the stunned boy, the museum has no plans to sue his family for damages. It's unclear what the restoration costs will be, but you can only imagine. A lifetime's worth of paper routes.
Insurers of the painting, owned by a private collector, will foot the cost to repair the fist-sized hole in the canvas.
“All 55 paintings in the venue are authentic pieces and they are very rare and precious,” reads the exhibition’s Facebook page. “Once these works are damaged, they are permanently damaged.”
So you have to wonder why this painting - and others like it - aren't better protected from the public.
But even collectors aren't safe from themselves. Casino magnate Steve Wynn accidentally elbowed his own Picasso, Le Rêve. The worst part: Wynn had been planning to sell the picture for an eye-watering $155m when his elbow had the misfortune to collide with the canvas.
Wynn took the incident in his stride, allegedly uttering a mere "Oh, shit. Oh, man." And he decided to keep the painting, after all.
Spill it: Have you or your kids ever damaged something through sheer clumsiness?
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