Cleaner wipes off valuable piece of art

Nov 05, 2011 |

London

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A cleaning woman in a German museum who mistook a valuable sculpture for a stain has damaged it beyond repair.

The installation by Martin Kippenberger called When It Starts Dripping From the Ceiling was on display at the Ostwall Museum in Dortmund.

The piece had been valued at 800,000 euros and was on loan from a private collector.

It consisted of a tower of wooden slats with a rubber trough placed underneath with a thin layer of paint representing dried rainwater.

“It is now impossible to return it to its original state,” Sky.com quoted a city spokesman as saying.

Cleaning crews had orders to keep 20cm (8ins) away from artworks but it was unclear if the woman had been informed of this by the contractor that employed her.

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