How Two Tourists Gave Verona's Van Gogh Chair an Unwanted Performance

Sometimes You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up

As someone who spends his life studying, writing, and thinking about contemporary art, I often say that art should speak freely, without the heavy breathing of critics suffocating it, without bending to fashionable intellectualism or the neurotic algorithms of the art market.

But then, once in a while, real life storms in and delivers a scene so absurd, so painfully symbolic, that not even the most experimental artist could have staged it better. Verona, 2025: enter the tourists, the Swarovski chair, and a masterclass in cultural cluelessness.

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Nicola Bolla’s Shimmering Homage (Now Slightly Cracked)

The object of this unintended performance was “Van Gogh”, a sculptural work by Italian artist Nicola Bolla.

Nicola Bolla - Van Gogh Chair

Bolla, ever the provocateur, took Vincent van Gogh’s humble wooden chair painted in 1888, full of loneliness and raw vulnerability, and did what the art world often does to sincerity: he covered it in hundreds of Swarovski crystals.

Voilà: Van Gogh’s fragile soul, reimagined as a sparkling monument to contemporary excess. A glittering shrine to the art world’s obsession with surface. Luxury meets melancholy. Craftsmanship meets kitsch. And it worked, conceptually, visually, ironically.

The chair sat, no pun intended, safely inside Palazzo Maffei House Museum, right in the romantic heart of Verona. It gleamed under the lights, silently inviting viewers to contemplate its layers of meaning. Emphasis on contemplate.

But alas, contemplation is not quite what the chair received.

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Two Tourists, One Chair, Zero Clue

Our protagonists: a man and a woman, tourists like millions of others, armed with smartphones and the insatiable hunger to document their cultural consumption.

First, the woman posed next to the chair. Nothing unusual. But then, in a stroke of creative inspiration, or possibly Olympic-level stupidity, the man decided that admiring the chair wasn’t enough. He sat on it.

The chair, being a fragile artwork covered in crystals, did not share his enthusiasm.

Snap. Collapse. Crystals everywhere.

As the director of Palazzo Maffei, Vanessa Carlon, summarized with the weary tone of someone who’s seen it all:

“Every museum's worst nightmare.”

You couldn’t write better satire if you tried.

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When the Museum Becomes a Selfie Stage

Of course, the museum filed an official complaint. Of course, security footage went viral. And of course, the scene ignited debates across social media. Because, frankly, this isn’t just about a broken chair — it’s about how we now experience art.

We live in a golden age of not actually looking at art.

Art is no longer something you experience. It’s something you accessorize. Something you pose next to while you carefully calculate your angle and lighting. The goal is no longer to absorb meaning — it’s to collect likes.

In this brave new world, "art appreciation" means getting as physically close as possible, ideally touching, sitting, or climbing if no one is watching. Museums are struggling to remain temples of contemplation while fending off waves of photo-hungry invaders.

Nicola Bolla’s Van Gogh Chair wasn’t just a fragile object. It was, unintentionally, a brilliant trap:

- Shiny enough to attract attention.

- Fragile enough to punish carelessness.

- Symbolic enough to perfectly expose the absurdity of our times.

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A Restoration with a Side of Irony

After the accident, a team of expert restorers, assisted by Verona’s fire brigade (yes, really), painstakingly resurrected the chair. The Swarovski crystals were reattached, the structure repaired.

And now? The chair is back on display.

Shining. Vulnerable. Possibly holding back a sigh every time another tourist approaches.

But make no mistake: this chair now carries a scar, invisible but permanent. It is no longer just Bolla’s glittering homage to Van Gogh. It’s now also a monument to that most modern of threats: the triumph of cluelessness over culture.

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The Uncomfortable Truth Nobody Wants to Admit

Here’s where it gets ugly. What happened in Verona isn’t an isolated accident. It’s a perfectly staged symptom of a much larger crisis:

- We consume art the way we consume everything: fast, shallow, and entirely about ourselves.

- The experience of simply standing still in front of a work has been replaced by the urge to document our own presence in front of it.

- Artworks aren’t reflections of the human condition anymore, they’re props for digital vanity.

In short: the tourists didn’t sit on the chair.

They sat on 500 years of cultural heritage.

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Palazzo Maffei Says It Best

The museum later released a statement that deserves to be tattooed at the entrance of every gallery in the world:

“Art must be loved, admired, but above all respected.”

Exactly. Respect is the missing ingredient in the modern visitor’s toolbox. We’ve confused access with entitlement.

Just because you’ve bought a ticket doesn’t mean you get to physically insert yourself into the artwork’s personal space. You are not part of the installation.

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The Chair Stands Again. Barely.

Today, the Van Gogh Chair shines once more beneath the lights of Palazzo Maffei, playing its dangerous game of seduction. It stands as a glittering survivor, now bearing the secret knowledge of its near-death experience.

And in some twisted way, the chair is even more powerful now.

It no longer speaks only of Van Gogh’s solitude or Bolla’s dazzling critique of art-world excess.

It now carries the full absurdity of the times we live in.

Art isn’t fragile because it's made of delicate materials.

Art is fragile because we are becoming incapable of protecting it.