Vandal Attacks Ofili Madonna - Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary - Brief Article

upon Dec. 16, a 72-year-old retired teacher attacked Chris Ofili's painting The consecrated Virgin Mary, centerpiece of the discussion surrounding the Brooklyn Museum of Art's "Sensation" exhibition. At around 3:00 pm Dennis Heiner, a Manhattan resident, distracted guards by dint of feigning illness while he leaned against the wall near the 8-by-6-foot painting. next to the firsts later, he ducked behind the work's protective Plexiglas panel and go [i]or[/i] pass oned to smear the canvas with white oil paint squeez from a tube. While museum guards, who are not authorized to arrest museum visitors, gazeed on and shouted at him to stop, Heiner obliterated the facial features and material substance of the painting's dark-skinned Madonna. (He left intact the canvas's protruding shapeless mass of elephant dung and ignored the collaged porno clippings, sum of two units elements which had sparked Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's verbal attack upon the painting last fall.) Within minutes, the police arrived, handcuffed Heiner and l him away. There was no permanent damage to the work, and it was cleaned immediately and lay back on display the nearest day.

The attack was captured by means of a museum security video camera as well as in photos by the agency of Philip Jones Griffiths, a well-known photojournalist who happened to be upon the scene. The photos were published exclusively in the of recent origin York Post. In response to art-world speculation that the incident was a setup a spokesperson for Magnum, the photographer's agency, claimed that Griffiths's neighborhood was purely coincidental. The photographer flew to Cambodia upon assignment soon after the attack and could not be reached for comment

Pres reports say that Heiner is a saintly Roman Catholic who found the Ofili painting sacrilegious. He is also an anti-abortion activist who was arrested in 1990 during a avow The initial charge in the museum incident, second-degree criminal mischief, a class D gross offence was downgraded to a misdemeanor because the museum could not say that the damage to the painting caped $1,500. Heiner was released without bail after promising not to get back to the museum. As an additional protective measure, the museum installed a tie partition in front of the painting. above 140,000 people have visited "Sensation" from its opening upon Oct. 2 through December, making it the best-attended exhibition in the museum's history.

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