Verona Museum sues man who broke glass-covered chair

▲ The chair is covered with Swarovski crystals and is a work by Nicola Bolla. Photo taken from Palazzo Maffei's social media.

AFP

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, June 17, 2025, p. 5

Rome. The Palazzo Maffei museum in Verona, Italy, announced yesterday that it had filed a complaint against a tourist who sat on a chair made of Swarovski crystals and broke it.

On Thursday, the museum published a video from its security cameras showing a tourist sitting on this work of art while a woman takes pictures. As he sits down, the chair collapses. "A museum nightmare ," the museum wrote on Instagram.

This is a work by Nicola Bolla, acquired by the venue in 2022, inspired by the straw chair in one of Vincent van Gogh's paintings.

The visitors fled before museum staff stopped them and could not be identified.

The Palazzo Maffei, which declined to give a value for the work, filed a complaint, stating that the incident occurred less than four weeks ago and that the chair has since been restored and is back on display.

It's a stupid gesture (...), but I also see a positive and artistic side to it , the author of the work declared in the Italian media Fanpage.

The Palazzo Maffei Museum in Verona exhibits both ancient and contemporary works.