We’re all aware that proper museum etiquette involves not climbing on the art, right? It should therefore go without saying that climbing on the art for the purposes of snapping a selfie is a definite no-no, right? Well… apparently not. At least, not for some people. Facepalm.
According to TIME, a student visiting the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan, Italy not only decided it would be an awesome idea to climb on top of a Greco-Roman statue – he decided it would be an awesome idea to snap a selfie while he was up there. Things, of course, did not go well either for the student or the statue: Somehow in the process of scrambling up top and yanking out his phone, he managed to knock off the statue’s left leg. The museum’s staff discovered it yesterday morning, and I’m sure they were predictably horrified. No, they don’t have the student’s name yet; they do, however, have the whole thing captured on security camera footage.
At least there’s one silver lining here: The statue was a copy that only (or maybe “only”) dates back to the 19th century. Depicting the “Drunken Stayr,” or "Barberini Faun," it was one of the pieces adorning the hallway leading to a room full of significantly more valuable sculptures. So, y’know…at least there’s that. The original “Drunken Satyr,” which was found in the ditches of the Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome circa 1624, lives at the Glyptothek in Munich.
Let’s all make a pact not to climb on stuff that’s not meant to climbed on, shall we? Because seriously. Who does that?!
