From nytimes.com:
A nearly four-inch tear is visible to the right of the boat. I like how the Minister of Culture describes the intruders as leaving “various bits of filth” — she sounds totally repulsed…. Dr. Disney
Intruders broke into the Musée d’Orsay early Sunday and one of them damaged a work by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet, the latest in a series of acts of vandalism and thefts at cultural sites in France.
A nearly 4-inch tear is seen in renowned work by Impressionist painter Claude Monet, “Le Pont d’Argenteuil,” at the Orsay Museum in Paris.
Christine Albanel, the minister of culture, said the intruders left a tear close to four inches long in the painting “The Argenteuil Bridge,” from 1874.
The break-in was “an attack against our memory and our heritage,” Ms. Albanel told French radio France Info. She said the intruders, believed to be four men and a woman, appeared drunk and “left various bits of filth” before “one of them stuck a fist into the magnificent masterpiece by Monet.”
The alarms sounded and museum personnel arrived quickly, but the intruders were able to flee, Ms. Albanel said. The painting can be restored, she said.
