Car Crashes Plague US Art World in June

The aftermath of the truck crash at O'Dunn Fine Art in La Mesa. Photo: Courtesy NBC 7.

June has already been a bloody month for car crashes in which art institutions are the victims. On June 1, a truck took out a concrete sign on the grounds of the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art in Great Falls, Montana, KRTV reports. And at about 10 a.m. on the morning of June 2, a pickup truck jumped the curb outside O’Dunn Fine Art in La Mesa, California, smashing through the art space’s front window, NBC 7 San Diego reports.

The Great Falls incident happened around 2 a.m. on June 1, and reduced the museum’s concrete and cinder block sign to rubble. There is no knowledge of the presumably-shaken driver’s whereabouts, and the likely-damaged vehicle was driven from the scene.

“Someone just plowed into the PGSMuseum sign across the street!” a nearby resident who didn’t want to be named told KRTV. “From our house, it sounded like someone dropped an air conditioner out of a window. Didn’t seem like there were injuries other than the beautiful sign and not so pretty truck anymore!”

The following morning, in La Mesa, a suburb northeast of San Diego, a white Ford Ranger crashed into O’Dunn Fine Art, though both the passenger Brandon Fitzpatrick and the driver, his uncle, were able to walk away from the wreck.

“His foot slipped off the break [sic] when we were trying to park, hit the gas I think, and we went through the window of this store,” Fitzpatrick told NBC 7.

“We were just opening the shop here, and I heard a big crash and it scared me, so I came right out,” Theresa Favro, proprietor of Amethyst Moon, the shop next-door, told NBC 7. “Kind of scary. Shook up the neighborhood. Everyone came running.”

It’s unclear when the next vehicle-on-art crash will happen, but based on the current spree, artnet News advises dealers and museum staffers in the western US to be extra vigilant.


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