The Damaged “Le Pont d’Argenteuil,” Musée d’Orsay
Agence France Presse today reported that “drunken intruders” created a four-inch rip last night in Monet‘s “Le Pont d’Argenteuil” at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. They were captured on camera but not, at this writing, apprehended.
According to AFP:
The incident happened during Paris’s so-called Nuit Blanche (White Night), when music and cultural events are staged late into the night and thousands throng the streets of the capital. The Musee d’Orsay however was not involved in the event…except for some major collateral damage.
The Associated Press quoted Culture Minister Christine Albanel saying:
We know there were four or five people, likely four boys and a girl, who entered around midnight to 1 a.m., broke a door. It appears they were drunk….Someone punched the magnificent masterpiece by Monet.
And here’s another quote from her, in Agence France Presse:
We have to see how we can toughen the penalties when there are break-ins to museums, churches and monuments.
How about toughening security, so that drunken revelers can’t so easily enter one of France’s premier art museums, let alone manage to vandalize a masterpiece and escape, despite the sounding of an alarm?
From the photo, above, the sadly damaged canvas, appears to be torn both horizontally and a vertically. The tan square on this floor plan shows you the location of Room 22, where the painting was hanging.