William Bouguereau “The Return of Spring” / statue, chair

(This 1886 painting has been twice attacked by people offended by its overt sensuality:

a) In 1890, while on view in Omaha as part of a traveling exhibition, the work was attacked by a man named Carey Judson Warbington, who took a nearby chair and threw it at the painting. The damage was minimal. Warbington, a fervently religious man, later explained that he’d seen similar pictures in a “house of ill-fame,” and didn’t want women like his mother or sister to see a work of such blatant sexuality. He felt he had to destroy the painting because it “was not at the place which must be natural to it.” He was declared insane at his trial and committed suicide shortly thereafter.

Interestingly, in the wake of the incident, the owner of the painting bought the chair used in the attack and, for a time, had it exhibited along with Bouguereau’s piece.

b) In 1976, while on view at Omaha’s Joslyn Museum, a 37-year-old window-cleaner working in the gallery took a nearby bronze statue from its pedestal and threw it at the painting. Damages were once again minimal.)

Jacob Epstein “Oscar Wilde’s tomb” / hammer & chisel, kisses

(In 1961, the sculpted angel that kneels atop Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Paris’ Pere Lachaise Cemetery was vandalized by two English women. The angel, done by sculptor Jacob Epstein, was originally endowed with over-sized testicles, which the two women found distasteful. The detached testicles were recovered soon after by the cemetery keeper, who ended up using them as paper weights. They were not reattached to Epstein’s piece.

The tomb was also famous for bearing lipstick traces of kisses left by hundreds of admirers. Over time, the grease from the kisses began to cause significant damage to the limestone. As a result, a glass barrier was installed to shield the monument in 2011.)

Albrecht Durer “Mary as Grieving Mother,” “Mourning of Christ,” and “The Paumgartner Altar” / sulfuric acid

(In 1988, a 51-year-old homeless man walked into the Alte Pinakothek Museum in Munich and sprayed these works with sulfuric acid contained in a champagne bottle. He wasn’t caught until a group of school children came into the gallery and one of the students cried out for him to stop. He did, setting down the bottle and then finding a guard to explain what happened.

The man later said he’d attacked the painting “out of revenge,” because of deductions that had been made from his pension to pay for similar attacks he had made on paintings in Düsseldorf and Hamburg. The man also described himself as “psychologically disturbed.”)

The Portland Vase

The Portland Vase is a Roman cameo glass vase dated somewhere between AD 5 and AD 25.

In 1845, while out on loan to the British Museum, the vase was shattered by a man named William Lloyd, who, after a week-long drinking binge, picked up another sculpture and threw it at the vase, smashing it to pieces.

At that time, the vase was only partially reassembled, as the restorer was unable to replace all of the pieces. (The missing fragments were apparently put into a box at some point in the process, misplaced, and ultimately forgotten.)

Then, in 1948, the vase’s keeper received the thirty-seven fragments in the mail. (The sender was not sure what the pieces were, and had actually sent them to the British Museum in hopes of identifying them.) Using these pieces, the vase was able to be fully reconstructed. Additional restorations were required and completed in 1986 and 1988. The restored vase was returned to public display in 1989, with little sign of the original damage visible.

Peter Paul Rubens “King Philip IV of Spain” / fire

(In 1985, an unidentified man was arrested for setting fire to this painting while it was on display in the Zurich Kunsthaus in Switzerland. The fire reduced the work to ashes, leaving only its Baroque frame.

The man was captured during a check of all visitors at the museum’s exits, which were closed after a guard noticed the smoke from the fire. He later justified his deed as an act of protest against environmental pollution.)

numerous Abstract Expressionist works / knife

(In 1985, a 24-year-old man named Eugene D. Burt attacked several works hanging in the main concourse area of a Washington DC government office complex. The damaged works were part of an exhibition that included artists Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, and Joan Mitchell.

Burt, owner of a nearby shoeshine stand, walked into the concourse, pulled out a kitchen knife and slashed 8 of the 75 paintings. Then, with a red crayon, he wrote various religious slogans onto the paintings, some of which read, “John Paul is Good” and “Antichrist Ronald Reagan 666.” Seven of the eight works in question were destroyed beyond repair.

When he was finished, he walked to a nearby police station, dropped his knife outside the door, and turned himself in. In his statement, he explained that he’d destroyed the works in order to “denounce the anti-Christ in Europe.” In a letter written to the Associated Press, Burt denounced President Reagan, writing, “Our President is the second least spoken of by Daniel the Prophet of the Old Testament.”

Only a few months earlier, six paintings from a different exhibition in the concourse were damaged when a man wrote on them with a ballpoint pen.)

Isamu Noguchi “Wakai-Hito” / human body

(In 2004, the Noguchi Museum in Queens, NY lent this bronze sculpture to an exhibition hall in Sapporo, Japan for inclusion in a retrospective of the sculptor’s work. During that exhibition, a museum patron became ill and lost her balance, falling onto the piece. The work was knocked to the floor and damaged, but was ultimately able to be repaired.)

ceramic totem by Tatiana Echeverri Fernandez / human body

(In 2008, a series of 5 ceramic totems, collectively entitled “Frauleins Christina, Panthea, Zenobia, Semiramis and Guinevere,” were on view at London’s Royal Academy when a museum visitor lost her balance and fell into them. One of the totems was irreparably damaged in the incident.

As one witness described the scene: “It was an enormous crash, like pottery smashing. Everyone was just standing around not knowing what to do at all, and one woman in a white top, who I assumed had knocked it over, was standing with her hand on her head.

"After a while a person who was in charge of the room ran off to get help and someone came in with a dustpan and brush to clean it up. Before that people were still coming in to the room and thought it was part of the exhibition. They were taking pictures. I think they thought it was meant to be like that. It was quite funny.”)

Alessandro Algardi “Jupiter victorious over the Titans: Fire” / human body

(A museum visitor had an epileptic fit and crashed into this 17th-century sculpture while it was on view at London’s Wallace Collection. Damages were apparently minimal.)

Rembrandt “Self Portrait at the Age of 63” / paint

(In 1998, a 26-year-old nudist activist (and former art student) named Vincent Bethell used yellow paint to draw a large dollar sign on this work while it was on view at London’s National Gallery. Bethell, who entered the museum wearing a woman’s floral print dress, had attached a tube of paint to his thigh with rubber bands. He stood in front of the work for over fifteen minutes before stripping naked and applying paint to the canvas. He was quickly subdued by security.

As Bethell later explained, “I was attempting to highlight the injustice of criminalising public nakedness. It was a naked protest that attempted to gain the right to be naked in public.”)

An excerpt from The Trial Of Tilted Arc (1986), a documentary chronicling the General Services Administration hearing that decided the fate of Richard Serra’s public sculpture Tilted Arc.

Commissioned and installed by the U.S. government in 1981, the sculpture became the center of controversy four years later when a public hearing was held to consider its removal from Federal Plaza in New York City. The trial raised several issues, including the validity of a contract between an artist and the government, the freedom of artistic expression, and the role of the public in designing the visual environment.

Richard Serra “Titled Arc” / US government

(In 1981, the US Arts-in-Architecture program (part of the US General Services Administration) commissioned artist Richard Serra to create a work of public art for the Federal Plaza in NYC.

The work proved controversial from the outset: some balked at its cost ($175,000 for a solid block of steel); others objected to the graffiti and rats it seemed to attract; others simply found it an eyesore. Most significantly, a number of people working in surrounding buildings complained that the work was an inconvenience, as they were forced to walk around the massive sculpture as they crossed the plaza. (Which, according to Serra, was precisely the point: “The viewer becomes aware of himself and of his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes. Contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer’s movement. Step by step the perception not only of the sculpture but of the entire environment changes.”)

As a result of this controversy, Judge Edward Re began a campaign to have the the sculpture removed. In 1985, there was a public hearing to determine whether Tilted Arc should be relocated. Serra, for his part, argued that work was site specific, that to remove it would be to destroy it, and if it was relocated, he would remove his name from the piece. At the end of the hearing, a jury ruled 4-1 to remove the piece. Serra appealed, and the ruling was debated over the course of the next five years or so.

In the end, the jury’s ruling was upheld. Exercising proprietary rights, authorities of the General Services Administration ordered the destruction of the public sculpture that their own agency had commissioned ten years earlier. Government workers dismantled the work on March 15, 1989.)

various Dutch artists / knife

(In 1989, a 61-year-old man entered the Dordrechts Museum and slashed ten different Dutch master works in less than two minutes. The man (whose full name was not released because Dutch law protects the anonymity of criminals) was unemployed and apparently acted in protest against workers from foreign countries living in his city. As he later stated, “By letting all those foreigners live in our country, we are throwing away our Dutch culture—thus, there’s no need for those paintings anymore.”

The man was released after promising not to visit a Dutch museum for the next six months. After this incident, he began a successful business selling his own works of art. The works, which are monochromatic with slits in them from left to right, represented, in his words, “the conflict between abstraction and realism.”)

Roy Lichtenstein “Nude in Mirror” / knife

(In 2005, a woman visiting a Lichtenstein retrospective at Austria’s Kunsthaus Bregenz suddenly pulled a knife from her handbag and repeatedly stabbed this work, leaving four 12-inch-long slashes in the canvas. Upon her arrest, police found that her purse also contained a screwdriver and a can of red spray paint, which she said she hadn’t had time to use. She said she attacked the work because she thought it was a forgery.)

Jo Baer “(untitled)” / lipstick

In 1977, a woman named Ruth van Herpen kissed a white monochrome painting by Jo Baer while it was on view at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art. She left a lipstick mark and a smear of red on the work. At her subsequent court hearing, she explained, “It looked so cold. I only kissed it to cheer it up.”)

Peter Paul Rubens “The Fall of the Damned” / acid

(In 1959, a man threw an acid on the painting while it was on view at Munich’s Alte Pinakothek. The painting, which dated back to circa 1620, was destroyed.)

Sue Lawty “Mesh” / security guard

(In 2006, while on display at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, this textile art installation was destroyed when a security guard, walking through the darkened gallery during closed hours, tripped on a security barrier and fell into it, dragging the work down with him as he fell.)

Agnolo Bronzino “An Allegory with Venus and Cupid” / fist

(In 2003, while it was on view at London’s National Gallery, a museum visitor punched this work several times, leaving a series of dents in the canvas. The work was able to be restored.)

Carl Andre “Venus Forge” / vomit

(In 2007, a child became queasy and vomited onto this work while it was on view at the Tate Museum in London. Several of the work’s steel and copper plates had to be removed for restoration, and the work was reinstalled in short order.)

Pablo Picasso “The Actor” / accidentally ripped

(In 2010, a female art student was visiting the Metropolitan Museum in New York when she lost her balance  and crashed into the artwork, causing a six inch vertical gash in the bottom right corner of the canvas. The work was eventually restored and reinstalled.)