Someone has accidentally broken Jeff Koons’ $42,000 balloon dog sculpture.
The piece, created by US pop artist Koons, was smashed into a million pieces on Thursday when a guest knocked it to the ground.
Witnesses said the woman tapped it with her finger, despite signs warning guests to ‘please don’t touch the artwork’.
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The expensive accident happened during an exclusive, VIP opening night of the Art Wynwood fair in Miami, Florida.
Artist Stephen Gamson said he first thought it was part of a planned performance, but realized it definitely wasn’t when everyone around him started to panic.
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“When this thing fell to the ground, it was like how a car accident draws a huge crowd on the highway,” he told the Miami Herald.
Another witness, Cédric Boero told the New York Times “life just stopped for 15 minutes”.
He said the woman responsible, who was an art collector, profusely apologized and said she “just wanted to disappear”.
Artist Stephen Gamson said he wanted to buy the balloon dog piece, even though it was now “shattered into a thousand pieces”.
“I tried to purchase the broken sculpture” because “it has a really cool story”.
He described it as “one of the most crazy things I’ve ever seen” and said “you will see this all over the news”.
And he wasn’t wrong.
It’s not every day a $42,000 artwork is shattered into a million pieces, especially so publicly.
In video footage Mr Gamson posted to his Instagram account, you can see gallery workers sweeping bits and pieces of the broken artwork into dustpans while people look on in shock.
It’s not all bad news though, as the artwork is reportedly covered by insurance, much to the woman’s undoubted relief.
