Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, Italian tourist damages a work to take a selfie

There are not only foreign tourists who damage Italian artworks, as happened in recent days at the Trinità dei Monti in Rome: there are also Italian tourists who make themselves known abroad. Last week, at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, the main museum of contemporary art in the Spanish capital, one of our compatriots damaged a work to take a selfie. It was a large set piece entitled La romería de los cornudos, by Alberto Sánchez (Toledo, 1895 - Moscow, 1962), an important artist and father of the Vallecas School, a group of artists who spread the innovations of the Surrealists in Spain. Sánchez’s work, a depiction of the ballet of the same name by Federico García Lorca and Cipriano Rivas Cherif, dates from 1933 and is located in room 205.12 of the museum, next to Pablo Picasso’s Guernica.

It is not clear how the woman damaged the work. The museum downplays the incident and reports a simple inattention on the part of the tourist, but witnesses heard by the Spanish newspaper ABC report that the woman climbed onto the small stage that is in front of the set (which is not walkable) to take a selfie, but during the operations she allegedly tripped and grabbed onto the work, thus causing a tear in the painted surface.

The incident occurred last week, and fortunately, the museum let it be known, the damage was minor: it was repaired as early as the next day. However, ABC further reports, police intervention was required at the museum because the woman refused to leave her personal details. Moreover, although the consequences for the work were modest, this cannot be said for what concerns the political consequences of the incident, which has raised a controversy in Spain: the Popular Party (PP), a center-right formation, has criticized the downplaying of the incident, and has addressed a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, to know whether the incident has any relation to the lack of surveillance personnel in Spanish state museums. Indeed, national museums in Spain also have the same problem that grips several Italian museums, and many institutions are forced to close due to staffing gaps. The Reina Sofía, for example, has a shortfall of 25 staff, out of a total of 119 positions.

“Although any damage of this kind is the responsibility, through recklessness or malice, of the person who commits it,” the PP points out, “it is true that it can be prevented through proper planning and with the appropriate means of surveillance, an event that coincides with the complaints of lack of staff and discomfort among the guards stationed in state museums.” The incident, moreover, is very reminiscent of one that occurred at the Possagno Gipsoteca in the summer of 2020, when an Austrian tourist lay down on the plaster of Canova’s Paolina Borghese to have his picture taken in the same pose as the sculpture, thus causing a break in Paolina’s toes. Vandal tourists, in short, know no bounds.

Pictured is the damaged work

Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, Italian tourist damages a work to take a selfie

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