Museum Visitor Purposely Smashes Ai Weiwei Sculpture

A man attending the opening reception of the survey “Ai Weiwei: Who Am I?” at thePalazzo Favain Bologna, Italy, intentionally destroyed a work by the Chinese dissident artist on September 20. CCTV video footage posted toInstagramby Ai shows the man, identified as Czech national Vaclav Pisvejc, approaching the artist’s blue-and-whitePorcelain Cube, 2009, and pushing it off the platform atop which it was placed, sending the sculpture crashing to the floor, upon which it shattered. Pisvejc, brandishing a large porcelain shard retrieved from the detritus, was summarily wrestled to the ground by security, who detained him until police arrived.

The action in some regards recalls Ai’s landmark 1995 workDropping a Han Dynasty Urn, a trio of black-and-white photographs showing the artist smashing a 2,000-year-old artifact, though it is unclear whether the resemblance was intentional. Pisvejc, a known rabble-rouser, has a long history of disrupting art events in and around Florence. His antics to date include balancing on the Uffizi terrace, defacing an Urs Fischer sculpture, setting fire to a black drape obscuring a copy of Michelangelo’sDavidas a symbol of mourning for Ukraine; attacking Marina Abramović by smashing a portrait of her over her head; and, at the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, climbing nude, with the word “Censored” painted on his body, onto a statue of Hercules and Cacus.

The fragments to which Porcelain Cube was reduced have been removed from the scene of the crime, and a picture of the work will remain on view in its place for the duration of the exhibition, which is slated to run through May 4, 2025. Italian daily Corriere della Sera revealed that Pisjevic has been charged with “destruction, dispersion, deterioration, defacement, soiling and illicit use of cultural or landscape assets.”

“I hope for his sake that he didn’t hurt himself on the pieces of porcelain,” Ai told the paper.