Gumming up a Frankenthaler

CultureGrrl readers know I have a special interest (and sometimes even a direct involvement) in safeguarding the condition of artworks in museums.
So I commend to your attention today a comprehensive and revelatory article on this subject, by M.P. McQueen on the front page of today’s Personal Journal section of the Wall Street Journal.
I can’t link to WSJ’s subscribers-only site. But I can give you a couple of outtakes:
Fund raising has turned museums and galleries into entertainment venues, with sometimes perilous consequences for delicate artworks and collectibles, insurance experts say. And, they add, budget cuts have left some museums with inadequate security to handle bigger crowds and protect the art. The upshot, these experts say, is that they are seeing more claims for artwork damaged at museums….
In February, a 12-year-old boy visiting the Detroit Institute of Arts with his sixth-grade class plucked a wad of gum from his mouth and deposited it on a 1963 canvas by Helen Frankenthaler, “The Bay,” a painting estimated to be worth $1.5 million or more. The work had to be removed for restoration. The child “picked the worst piece of art he could have picked” — an unprimed painting, says the museum’s director, Graham W.J. Beal.
The latter incident, of course, reminded me of how I saved a Cézanne.