Lego Sculpture Destroyed by Child Gone Wild
What Did the Fox (Sculpture) Say? BEHAVE, KID OR BE BANNED!
Children in museums run amok and destroy valuable artwork–will this result in a ban? Read more:
Above we see the creation of artist, Mr. Zhao, who spent 3 long days and nights recreating the character, “Nick” from the movie Zootopia completely out of Lego bricks. Almost as tall as his human creator, the sculpture was valued at more than $15,000.
It so happened that it was the first day of the exhibition and the display had been open to the public for no more than an hour when the incident occurred.
The sculptor was generous in not demanding compensation for his work from the parents of the errant child. In his view, it was an accident and the child did not mean to damage the work and therefore the apology from the parents was enough.
Mr. Zhao may have been willing to accept the fate of his work, but not everyone is feeling that generous. Especially as this is not the only recent incident of children destroying sculpture. While both examples in this article happened to take place in China, the damage and disrepect shown to artists and museums is leading many to call for a ban on children in museums.
At least the destruction of Nick does appear to be unintentional, or at least not done with intent. That cannot be said of a glass angel, “Angel is Waiting” which was damaged on May 17. In that case, the glass sculpture by artist Shelly Xue was purposefully vandalized by two youngsters visiting the Shanghai Museum of Glass.
To make the situation worse and enrage viewers even more was the fact that security cameras not only captured the children damaging the work, it recorded 2 “adult chaperones” video taping the antics.
This sculpture was made by Xue for her newborn daughter. It has been on display since 2014, and was clearly located behind ropes to keep visitors at a safe distance.
The sculptor has decided to leave the piece as the children damaged it, with a new name: “Broken.”
Information contained in this article was curated from Alicia Tan’s article on Mashable , CCTV News’ Facebook Page ,and Hyperallergic
Image credits: Weibo.com/trush
Video courtesy of CCTV News.
