Timur Serebrykov, 27, of Pittsburgh, a guard at the Carnegie Museum of Art has been charged with slashing Vija Celmins’ “Night Sky .12″ a painting he apparently didn’t like, damaging it beyond repair.
The museum’s surveillance camera caught the vandalism on May 16, police said Thursday.
The 31-by-37 ½-inch oil-on-canvas painting of a black starlit night had a large vertical gouge in the middle and was damaged beyond repair & valued at $1.2 million according to a police affidavit.
Court documents indicate Serebrykov used a key or other implement to damage the painting because he disliked it.
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EW
This is deeply tragic, she is a fantastic painter. Couldn’t he just have started a podcast and made petty remarks about it instead?
She is a fantastic painter. A huge bummer- and doubly so since the painting was on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. Too bad it wasn’t one of those Hitler paintings….
“Mr. Serebrykov worked for Capital Asset Protection, a Neville Island-based security contractor.” Privatizing and then using underpaid, undertrained employees. The wonders of American capitalism.