An American tourist broke off an entire pinkie off a 600-year-old Italian statue. What part of “don’t touch the art” do you not understand, people?
Sadly, this long-standing rule of museum etiquette seems to be interpreted very loosely by visitors. Recently, Museo dell’Opera del Duomo guards spotted a man standing very close to the statue by Giovanni d’Ambrogio centuries ago. By the time the guards approached him, the damage had already been done. The visitor was measuring the statue’s finger (for reasons unclear), touching and subsequently destroying it in the process.
Head of the museum Timothy Verdun spoke out about the tourist’s costly clumsiness, proclaiming that:
In a globalized world like ours, the fundamental rules for visiting a museum have been forgotten, that is, ‘Do not touch the works.’
It’s unknown whether repairs to the sculpture will be successful, however, it’s worth noting that the finger in question was not original to the piece and was added after older damage. (Image: YahooNews)
