Oops! Art lover trips, shatters ancient vases

Attention All Visitor Services!

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Oops! Art lover trips, shatters ancient vases
Museum's Qing dynasty collection reduced to shards, but visitor is OK

LONDON - It was every art lover's nightmare — a stumble, a crash and
thousands of dollars worth of historic fragments lying on the floor.

The incident happened last week at the Fitzwilliam Museum in
Cambridge, England, which for decades has displayed a group of Qing
dynasty Chinese vases on a window sill.

A hapless visitor tripped on a loose shoelace, tumbled down a flight
of stairs and crashed into the vases, smashing them into smithereens.

The man, who has not been named, left the museum shaken but undamaged
-- in sharp contrast to the vases.

"It was a most unfortunate and regrettable accident but we are glad
that the visitor involved was able to leave the museum unharmed,"
museum director Duncan Robinson said on Monday.

"Whilst the method of displaying objects is always under review, it is
important not to over-react and make the museum's collections less
accessible to the visiting public," he added in a statement.

The priceless vases, dating from the late 17th or early 18th century,
were donated to the museum in 1948 and have become one of its most
recognizable exhibits.

Shocked but determined museum staff members have vowed to glue the
shards back together again.

--
Regards,
Sanjeev Narang

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