Destroyed Paintings Make You Appreciate Museums

Ever wonder what would happen to paintings if we didn’t preserve them? We take for granted that so many pieces of art have been preserved in museums for hundreds of years and never stop to think about how beat up they would become otherwise. Artist Valerie Hegarty illustrates what would have happened to famous masterpieces if they were say, left out in the woods to get destroyed by woodpeckers, or tossed over a waterfall. She replicates old paintings with incredible detail and then makes them look burnt, warped, and ripped up. A lot of the pieces she chooses have a nature theme, which fits with the “left outside to rot” look she gives them. So does this mean that I’m going to visit my local art museum more often? No, but only because I got banned for stealing change out of the Fountain from the Monastery of Saint-Michel-de-Cux. True story.

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