Mess marks spot when food splatters masterpieces

A chef at an Art Gallery of NSW opening night splattered food on a $3 million John Glover landscape.

The three-panel painting by Janet Dawson, Balgalal series 5 - Sunday morning was damaged and torn during a function at the Art Gallery of NSW.

The Art Gallery of NSW has ­ordered its caterers back to the kitchen for food preparation after a chef at an opening night flicked food off a $3 million John Glover landscape after he’d splattered it.

The contractor for Matt Moran’s Chiswick restaurant, which opened at the gallery three months before the incident in ­October 2014, was preparing food on a trestle table for the bustling opening of blockbuster Pop to Popism in one of the AGNSW’s Old Courts where its most precious artworks are on high-profile display.

Damage reports obtained under Freedom of Information laws reveal food splashes were found on two 200-year-old Glovers, their labels and on the wall alongside other multi-million-dollar masterpieces.

Security footage revealed “food flicked off by the chef’s hands, small pieces of food, brown stains and clear liquid stains”.

A Clement Meadmore sculpture, and Glover’s 1767 landscapes Natives on the Ouse River and Van Diemen’s Land and Ullswater, early morning escaped permanent damage but a large triptych by Victorian artist Janet Dawson wasn’t so lucky.

Two weeks earlier, a different contractor, while packing up after an evening event, swung a trolley loaded with folded tables into the 40-year-old painting, ripping a hole in its canvas.

Balgalal series 5 — Sunday Morning sustained a 5cm tear, canvas distortion and a pair of 30cm-long abrasions. The painting, valued at more than $65,000, was taken off display after the incident, which was captured on CCTV. It has not been rehung.

The now elderly Dawson is unaware the painting was slashed and perforated while on display at Sydney’s premier art museum and her gallerist, Stella Downer, said she would not be happy when she found out. “She doesn’t know about it — I think she would be horrified, I didn’t know this had happened and I’ll contact the gallery,” Ms Downer said.

AGNSW collections director Suhanya Raffel said all food preparation now took place in the kitchen as a result of the flicking incident, but food was still served amid collections.

“We use our spaces in different ways — catering is part of what we do and staff are trained,” she said.

There were 56 conservation ­incidents during the past two years, on par with the number of incidents in other years this decade at the gallery, which has 1.3 million visitors a year. Most conservation work was required for finger marks on paintings and sculptures, most remarkably ­including on one of the gallery’s most famous pictures, Vincent van Gogh’s Head of a peasant.

Visitors stepping backwards and crashing into works while taking photos was also an issue that Ms Raffel said staff were working to educate visitors about. One staff member reported a child drawing on a Grayson Perry tapestry while its parents looked on.

Ms Raffel said most damage and fingering came about through curiosity. “None of it is vindictive or nasty,” she said.

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