Accident or staged publicity stunt? Does the artist benefit from this "selfie domino" that is said to destroy $200,000 of artwork?

There's video of the incident:



Very entertaining (if it's really an accident).

The NYT carries the story — of a show I don't think it would have covered otherwise — under the headline "Oops! A Gallery Selfie Gone Wrong Causes $200,000 in Damage." Which got my attention. Why was 1 row of that exhibit — which looks easily replicable — worth $200,000?

The video, which went up Thursday, "has racked up nearly 300,000 views," according to the NYT on Friday. Right now, it has over 2 million views, including mine, and I'm encouraging you to have yours.

It is possible this was staged. The video was uploaded by someone who claims to know [the artist Simon] Birch and its description ends with a plug: “The rest of The 14th Factory is one of its kind. .... Go visit before it closes end of July (or before a few more pieces break).”

But in an email, Mr. Birch said it was a true accident. Still, he said, he would not be putting signs up urging visitors to be careful. “We trust people.” Mr. Birch said. “Crowns are fragile things. They are symbols of power. Perhaps it’s ironic and meaningful that they fell.”

If it adds meaning for the plinths to topple and the crowns to break, that supports the theory that the incident was intended. Even if the artist didn't stage that particular woman's behavior, the whole place seems staged for something like that to happen, with video, the news stories, and the artist's quote about how meaningful it all is.

The selfie angle is extremely popular with new media, because what's this world coming to, what's wrong with these kids today?

The NYT has run 1,186 stories with the word "selfie" and 1,185 of them are post-2012. (The one outlier is a story about Chinese prisoners from 1971, and that's just a false positive. The word isn't really there. The OED has the word originating in Australia, first detected in an online forum in 2002: "Sorry about the focus, it was a selfie."

Museum selfies are a special newsworthy category. The NYT has 187 stories with the words "museum" and "selfie." I haven't counted how many of those are about problems caused by museum/gallery visitors taking selfie, but obviously it's something the NYT is following (thus making it predictable that selfie-caused damage to artwork will get publicity).

In the "Oops!... $200,000 in Damage" article, the NYT goes on to tell us of other incidents, beginning with this one:

Our Los Angeles woman is hardly alone in the annals of the selfie-clumsy. At the “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors” exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, a huge hit featuring immersive mirrors, part of the museum closed for three days after a patron shattered a glowing LED pumpkin in February.

I'm singling that one out, because it goes with a hilarious correction at the end of the article:

An earlier version of this article misstated the value of a glowing LED pumpkin that was shattered in February at the Hishhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. The value was negligible; the pumpkin was not worth $800,000.

Ha! If the damned pumpkin was overvalued by a factor of — what? — 200,000, maybe the NYT should rethink that assertion of "$200,000 in Damage" in its headline. Compare it to my headline: "said to destroy...."

And, I mean, look at that video. The crowns don't break. (What are they made of?) The plinths can be set right again. What damage is there at all? Notice that the voices on the video don't seem the slightest bit upset at the incident. Why did the NYT pass along this patently spurious number as a fact rather than an assertion?

But I will give the NYT credit for not working Donald Trump into the story. The fragility of power, the meaningful falling. That had to be tempting.