For shame! The ancient and modern horror of breaking priceless artefacts

Was it my fault? Definitely. But how? It could have been the slightly too vigorous flick of the soft brush. Perhaps I should have cradled its neck more tenderly? These questions replay in my head, even today, decades after the disaster that was my work experience.

The scene was the Museum of London. As a new graduate, I spent most of my time in the back office before finally being allowed on to the public floor, where the glass cases were opened and I was shown how to clean the artefacts. I dusted a coin. So far, so good. Then I brushed a Roman spoon and watched in horror as it snapped in two. Their backs were turned. For a moment, I reasoned (hoped) that the museum probably had hundreds more artefacts of the Roman city of Londinium; it could happen to anyone; these sorts of things occurred all the time. Then I came clean.

The look on their faces told me that these things did not happen all the time. “Oh my God,” was the succinct verdict. I went home and hid in bed, wishing the horror would fade (a swift fatal accident, perhaps?), before seeing out the remainder of my work experience far from any precious exhibits.

There was nothing about this breakage that could be explained away. It was not a creative gesture, such as the auto-destructive art of the 1960s or, more recently, Banksy’s shredding canvas stunt. Nor an act of protest like the Just Stop Oil activists throwing paint over Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”. It was just a dumb accident.

This scarring experience causes my stomach to lurch whenever I hear tales of others breaking artefacts, most recently, the poor woman who accidentally smashed Jeff Koons’ “Balloon Dog (Blue)” in Miami last week. Reports vary over whether she tapped the shiny sculpture or knocked its pedestal. It doesn’t matter; the result was the same. It shattered.

“Life just stopped for 15 minutes,” an observer told The New York Times. The woman reportedly said she was “very, very sorry” and “just wanted to disappear”. Oh, love, I feel your pain. The squirming panic of the man who fell down a staircase at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, and broke three Qing dynasty vases, also has my sympathy. He described it as “my Norman Wisdom moment, just one of those unbelievably unlucky things . . . I’m sure I only hit the first one and that must have flown across the windowsill and hit the next one, which then hit the other, like a set of dominoes.”

Not everyone’s mortification is as lasting. I am sure Steve Wynn, the casino mogul, felt great regret when his elbow punctured “Le Rêve”, the Picasso painting he had agreed to sell to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen. But no doubt the eventual sale for $155mn in 2013, following repairs, helped ease the pain.

Looking back at my accident, I am struck by how absurdly old-fashioned and, dare I say, pure the experience seems. Anthropologists have observed a distinction between a guilt culture stemming from intrinsic moral values to a shame culture, where regret over wrongdoing is more concerned with judgment by others. In the internet world, the potential for shaming is just one drunken swipe away. Dodgy views or actions from someone’s past can emerge unexpectedly on social media and take on a life of their own.

I was reminded of this lurking threat when I watched the new series of Party Down, a cult comedy about a catering company staffed by out-of-work actors, entertainers and writers. One young influencer insists on being prepared to face public opprobrium, just in case. “Good or bad, right or wrong, nothing matters . . . You need an apology video. It’s a rite of passage,” he argues.

The agony of breaking an artefact is enough. No one needs a reminder or public head-hanging. I hope the balloon dog woman gets her wish: to disappear.

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