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A man has been charged after spraying graffitti on a wall of the Whitney Museum of Art during the final weekend of its Jeff Koons retrospective.
New Yorker Christopher Johnson, 33, sprayed large black letters next to Koons’s sculpture Hanging Heart. The New York Times reports that after a scuffle with the museum’s security guards he was taken into custody and charged with criminal mischief, making graffiti, possession of a graffiti instrument and criminal nuisance.
The incident was captured in an Instagram video.
Koons has made five versions of Hanging Heart. In 2007, one sold at Sotheby’s for $23m, then the most expensive piece of art created by a living artist sold at auction.
The incident took place just after midnight on Saturday, during a 36-hour opening to mark the conclusion of the Koons retrospective. It is the final show at the Whitney’s current home before the museum moves to a new building designed by the architect Renzo Piano in New York’s Meatpacking district.
After checking to see whether the Koons work had been damaged, the show’s curator, Scott Rothkopf, and director of visitor experience, Adrian Hardwicke, had the wall repainted without closing the show. On Sunday night, when the exhibition was still busy, there was no sign of damage.
The exhibition had been vandalised earlier in its run. In August, a man painted a crimson X on a wall near Koons’s Rabbit sculpture, though the artwork was unscathed.
The retrospective will move to the Pompidou museum in Paris.
