A sculpture worth $61,000 by renowned artist Jeff Koons was destroyed during a VIP art event in Miami last week. Source: Stephen Gamson/Instagram
A $61,000 glass sculpture by renowned artist Jeff Koons was shattered at a VIP Miami art preview when a visitor accidentally knocked it over.
Koons is famous for creating sculptures of seemingly innocuous objects.
The destroyed sculpture was part of Koons’ “balloon dog” series, on display at Art Wynwood in Miami.
Miami Art Fair visitor accidentally smashes a #JeffKoons ballon dog sculpture. pic.twitter.com/zso9pAop2W
— 🧀 NYcheesy (@NYcheesy) February 19, 2023
A witness believes that the woman was attempting to see if the balloons were real when she tapped it, causing it to fall off of its pedestal and shatter on the ground.
Some in the crowd thought it was a performance art piece, or a staged stunt.
“I saw this woman was there, and she was tapping (the sculpture), and then the thing fell over and shattered into thousands of pieces,” said artist Stephen Gamson to a Fox News Affiliate in Miami.
In an Instagram post, Gamson shows video of the destroyed sculpture. In the post, he says that it was “one of the most crazy things I’ve ever seen.”
He also claims to have offered to buy the remains of the artwork, as he says, “It has a really cool story.”
Benedicte Caluch, an art advisor with Bel-Air Fine Art, sponsors of Koons’ piece, told the Miami Herald that the woman did not intentionally break the sculpture and that insurance would cover the damage caused by the accident.
This isn’t the first time one of Koons’ balloon dogs was destroyed in Miami. In 2016, a similar incident occurred where a magenta balloon dog fell out of a display case during the Design Miami exhibition.
“It’s a shame when anything like that happens but, you know, it’s just a porcelain plate. We’re really lucky when it’s just objects that get broken, when there’s little accidents like that, because that can be replaced,” Koons told website Page Six in 2016.
In 2019, Koons’ “Rabbit” sculpture sold for $131.8 million, a record price for a living artist, according to Christie’s auction house at the time.
Watch the moment Jeff Koons’s ‘Rabbit’ sets a new #WorldAuctionRecord for a work by a living artist. https://t.co/3ZWvCzUDAN pic.twitter.com/ToKxCpzUK6
— Christie’s (@ChristiesInc) May 16, 2019
