A man has broken into the Dallas Museum of Art and damaged three ancient Greek artifacts dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries BC, museum officials said on Thursday.
The man, identified by Dallas police as Brian Hernandez, 21, “seriously damaged” four works of art, said in an interview Agustin Arteaga, director of the museum. He had broken into the museum by repeatedly hitting a glass door with a steel chair around 10pm on Wednesday, Mr Arteaga said.
Mr Arteaga estimated that the items insured were worth $ 1 million or more, but the true cost of the destruction would not be known until officials and insurers assessed the damage.
“From what we see, there was no intention of stealing anything, of damaging any work of art in a deliberate way,” Mr Arteaga said. “It was just someone who was going through a moment of anger and found it as a way to express it.”
Greek items include a black-figure kiliks, a sixth-century BC bowl, including vignettes of Heracles fighting the Nemean lion; red-figure pixis, a cylindrical vessel with a lid from the 5th century BC; and a ceramic amphora – a tall jar with two handles – from the sixth century BC The other work of art that has been severely damaged is a ceramic container by a contemporary Native American artist, Mr Arteaga said.
Museum officials called the vandalism “isolated” and a product of an individual. They said Dallas police had arrested the suspects on the spot, no one was injured and the man was not carrying a weapon.
“While we are devastated by this incident, we are grateful that no one was injured,” museum officials said in a statement.
Dallas police said Mr Hernandez was charged with a felony, a felony. He could not be found immediately and it is unclear if he has a lawyer.
The damage to the Dallas Museum was not the only devastating act in the art world this week that put museum security officials on edge. On Sunday, a man dressed as a woman jumped from a wheelchair at the Louvre in Paris and began pounding on the glass hiding the Mona Lisa before smudging the glass, which looked like a cake. The painting is not damaged, museum officials said.
In Dallas, Mr Arteaga said he did not want the damage to distract from the museum’s mission, which has a collection of more than 25,000 objects spanning about 5,000 years.
“Museums are here to protect, preserve and preserve the best creations of humanity,” he said. “We are doing this to give an understanding of where we came from and what we can do in the future to become a better society.
On Thursday morning, about 1 pm after the burglary, the doors of the museum opened to the public in regular time.
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