A VOLUNTEER inadvertently destroyed a work of art on display in a museum — by wiping the dust off it.
The misguided clean-up attempt ruined Inverted Syntax-16, which features a dust-covered mirror on a plain wooden board.
It also has a smudge in the middle — said to symbolise the cultural consciousness of the middle-class.
But the volunteer mistakenly believed the smeared mirror was simply dusty — and decided to give it a wipe down with toilet roll.
The 40 years of dust on the mirror was mostly cleaned off before colleagues at the museum in Taiwan noticed and tried to intervene.
Bosses have had to tell artist Chen Sung-chih they fear it is irreparable.
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It had been part on show at the Keelung Museum of Art, near Taipei, as part of a wider display called We Are Me, which features works made from building materials and household objects.
Keelung’s Culture and Tourism Bureau says it apologised to the artist — but faces coughing up compensation for the damage.
However, some critics have argued the accidental wipe is now part of the artwork and must be left as it is.
Last year a do-gooder mechanic was left red-faced after throwing away two beer cans from a Dutch exhibition which he assumed was rubbish.
The cans were actually a celebrated work by French artist Alexandre Lavet called “All the good times we spent together” and resembles two cans of a popular Belgian brand of lager.