Italian artist Nicola Bolla’s sculpture Van Gogh Chair was seriously damaged earlier this month at Palazzo Maffei in Verona, Italy when two tourists tried to snap a photo with the work. Surveillance footage revealed that the visitors waited for museum staff to leave the gallery before posing with the sculpture, which partially collapsed as one of them sat on it.
The sculpture is Bolla’s reinterpretation of Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 painting Van Gogh’s Chair, which depicts a simple wooden seat on a tiled floor. Bolla’s version, created between 2006 and 2007, transforms the familiar image into a shimmering object coated in hundreds of Swarovski crystals. It had been part of the permanent collection on view at the museum in Verona’s Piazza delle Erbe.
“They waited for the staff to leave the room,” Vanessa Carlon, the museum’s director, said in a video posted to its Instagram. “And then…off they went, indifferent to what had happened….What you just saw would be ridiculous if it hadn’t, unfortunately, actually happened. The ultimate nightmare for any museum.”
Following the incident, the museum staff feared it would not be possible to restore the sculpture due to its fragile construction. However, conservators were able to complete a complex restoration, and the piece has since been returned to public view at the museum.
Born in Saluzzo in 1963, Bolla is known for his playful, yet historically informed, use of materials such as Swarovski crystals, playing cards, and everyday objects. One standout work, Skull (1997), is also encrusted with crystals and preceded Damien Hirst’s similarly adorned skull by a decade.
The incident is one of several recent cases where museum visitors have damaged works. Most recently, a child damaged a Mark Rothko painting at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Netherlands in April. Last year, a man shattered a sculpture by Ai Weiwei at Palazzo Fava in Bologna, Italy.
