Vandal Attacks Ofili Madonna - Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary - Brief Article

Art in America, Feb, 2000

On Dec. 16, a 72-year-old retired teacher attacked Chris Ofili's painting The Holy Virgin Mary, centerpiece of the controversy surrounding the Brooklyn Museum of Art's "Sensation" exhibition. At around 3:00 p.m., Dennis Heiner, a Manhattan resident, distracted guards by feigning illness while he leaned against the wall near the 8-by-6-foot painting. Seconds later, he ducked behind the work's protective Plexiglas panel and proceeded to smear the canvas with white oil paint squeezed from a tube. While museum guards, who are not authorized to arrest museum visitors, looked on and shouted at him to stop, Heiner obliterated the facial features and body of the painting's dark-skinned Madonna. (He left intact the canvas's protruding lump of elephant dung and ignored the collaged porno clippings, two elements which had sparked Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's verbal attack on the painting last fall.) Within minutes, the police arrived, handcuffed Heiner and led him away. There was no permanent damage to the work, and it was cleaned immediately and put back on display the next day.

The attack was captured by a museum security video camera as well as in photos by Philip Jones Griffiths, a well-known photojournalist who happened to be on the scene. The photos were published exclusively in the New York Post. In response to art-world speculation that the incident was a setup, a spokesperson for Magnum, the photographer's agency, claimed that Griffiths's presence was purely coincidental. The photographer flew to Cambodia on assignment soon after the attack and could not be reached for comment.

Press reports say that Heiner is a devout Roman Catholic who found the Ofili painting sacrilegious. He is also an anti-abortion activist who was arrested in 1990 during a protest. The initial charge in the museum incident, second-degree criminal mischief, a class D felony, was downgraded to a misdemeanor because the museum could not say that the damage to the painting exceeded $1,500. Heiner was released without bail after promising not to return to the museum. As an additional protective measure, the museum installed a rope partition in front of the painting. Over 140,000 people have visited "Sensation" from its opening on Oct. 2 through December, making it the best-attended exhibition in the museum's history.