The world-renowned Pompidou Center of Paris, which set out in March to celebrate the work of Los Angeles artists, has accidentally destroyed two of their works -- which fell from museum walls. A third piece was slightly damaged.
The incidents, all of which occurred during the March-to-July run of "Los Angeles 1955-1985," have experts wondering whether a major museum has ever done so much damage in the course of a single show.
The artists involved and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which owned one of the destroyed works, expressed bewilderment and a deep sense of loss.
"It's tragic," said Lyn Kienholz, head of the California / International Arts Foundation, who acted as a go-between for the French contemporary art museum. "It never should have happened. There's no excuse."
"It's not our guilt," Catherine Grenier, who curated the show for the Pompidou, said from her Paris home. "For me, it's not a coincidence. These two works were made of the same materials, and made in the same period. And both were incredibly fragile."
But LACMA curator Lynn Zelevansky, who heads the contemporary art department, noted that the piece the museum lent had gone on and off display often -- and survived several earthquakes -- during its three decades in LACMA's care.
That piece was Craig Kauffman's "Untitled Wall Relief," a 1967 work of acrylic lacquer on vacuum-formed Plexiglas that measured 52 by 78 inches. Pompidou officials told LACMA it fell and shattered July 16, just before the show closed.
"It's extremely upsetting," said LACMA Director Michael Govan. "We're still investigating all of the details."
The other total loss was an untitled piece made by Peter Alexander in 1971 and lent by the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York. That resin work, which resembled a black bar about 8 feet high and 5 inches wide, fell overnight in the days before the show opened to the public in March.
"I'd been sort of holding on to it preciously," Alexander said from his Santa Monica studio. "I don't know whether it's arrogance or passivity, but I've never dealt with anybody or any institution that works this way."
Alexander said that the museum notified his gallery, paid $28,000 in compensation and borrowed another piece to fill the gap in the show, but that nobody at the Pompidou contacted him directly.
