Most people wouldn’t ask a glamorous actress to leave their bedroom, but that’s exactly what happened to British star Liz Hurley, who was escorted out of London’s Victoria & Albert Museum last week for taking a selfie on the 16th century Great Bed of Ware.
According to the V&A Museum’s website, “The bed is famously over three meters wide, the only known example of a bed of this size, and reputedly able to accommodate at least four couples.”
Besides its impressive dimensions, the bed is also treasured for its elaborate handiwork, as the museums describes: “The Bed epitomizes the flamboyantly carved and painted beds of the late Elizabethan period. The woodwork is profusely carved with anglicized Renaissance patterns, acanthus leaves and strapwork.”
The actress reportedly triggered an alarm when she took a seat on the priceless 10-foot wide mattress to capture that perfect shot.
“As we were leaving Liz and I wanted to take a quick selfie on this really old bed,” her friend, shoe designer Patrick Cox, told the Daily Mail. “The alarm went off and all these security guards came and escorted us out of the building. It was very funny.”
The resulting image, which Hurley shared with her 164,000 Instagram followers racked up over 3,000 likes in only five days.
“Oops. Couldn’t resist perching on this magnificent bed in the glorious V&A last night…and set all the alarms off,” she wrote in the caption. “Thank you to the V&A Museum staff for being nice.”
The V&A has a strict “no touching” rule to preserve its historic exhibits. Touching introduces dirt and oil from the skin onto an object’s surface, which can attract dirt to linger and degrade old and fragile objects.
Luckily, Hurley’s clandestine selfie adventure didn’t cause any direct harm to the exhibit or the photographer, but things could have ended very differently: This past May, a selfie-taker smashed a priceless historic Italian statue of Hercules, while in Russia, a fatal accident saw the introduction of new safety guidelines for selfie-takers.