Punching Monet
People are stupid:
Intruders, apparently drunk, broke into the Orsay Museum in Paris early today and punched a hole in a renowned work by Impressionist painter Claude Monet, Le Pont d'Argenteuil.
Here's the wound:
In addition to the obvious stupidity of the people who carried out this act of vandalism, the security people at the Musee d'Orsay deserve some kind of Ultra Stupid award. Like the Louvre a few blocks away, priceless works of art are largely unprotected by anything except wishful thinking. At the Louvre, the only painting behind glass I can think of is the Mona Lisa, and that's only because it's been stolen a couple of times already. After the high-profile thefts of Munch's The Scream and Madonna, one would think the world's museums would start being a little more careful about the security of their most vulnerable pieces.