Child Punctures Magritte Painting With Pinecone at Israel Museum
René Magritte's “The Castle of the Pyrenees” (1959) was removed from view to undergo restoration.
Climate activists say that fossil fuels are the biggest threat to art and humanity, and critics say that climate activists are the ones threatening access to arts and culture with their museum antics. But it turns out that the real threat might actually be a child equipped with a pinecone, as evidenced by a recent incident at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Israeli media outlets have reported that a young child punctured René Magritte's “The Castle of the Pyrenees” (1959) with a pinecone taken from the museum's garden.
Missing from its permanent display for the last two weeks, the surreal painting, which depicts a craggy, castle-topped rock levitating in the sky over a crashing ocean wave, has been in the museum's conservation lab to treat the pinecone puncture wound on the canvas.
“The first stage of the conservation process for Magritte's damaged work is treating the substrate itself, since the hole created a dent,” said Sharon Tager, director of the Israel Museum's conservation lab, in an interview with Haaretz. "We first restore the substrate and canvas to their original level, then stitch it and treat the layers of oil paint."
Tager said that this process will take several weeks because each step in the process requires professional consultation, but once the process is complete, “the vast majority of those looking at the work will not recognize that it was damaged.”
The painting was neither protected by glass nor a motion sensor when it was pierced onsite, and Haaretz noted that a museum guard witnessed the damage unfold in a matter of seconds while the child's family was nearby. The child is "five or six years old," according to the newspaper.
A similar incident took place at the University of Haifa's Hecht Museum in 2024, when a child accidentally shattered a large Canaanite jar on display. In 2025, a multimillion-dollar Mark Rothko painting sustained scratch marks after a child touched it while it was exhibited at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.
While the conservation laboratory maintains confidence in its ability to repair the damage to Magritte's painting, the Israel Museum was less lucky in 2023, when an American tourist intentionally smashed two Ancient Roman sculptures on display.
Hyperallergic has reached out to the museum for comment.
