Art: Slasher

Feared and hated by museum keepers the world over are those psychopaths whose muddled mentalities lead them to slash at paintings on display. Last week in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts found that 23 canvases stored in the cellar had been ripped by a slasher’s knife. Soon police were able to report that this time the mutilator was no neurotic pigment-sticker, but one of the museum’s own guards, piqued because his job had been liquidated. Ex-Watchman Joseph Cassidy admitted he had knifed a portrait of Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon’s brother, by Academy Founder Charles Willson Peale; had hacked at the 22 other paintings and finally hauled off at a marble group of Columbus discovering America, chipping it severely.

Pursuing the case to nearby Harrisburg, where Watchman Cassidy had formerly lived, sleuths found a store of Academy art decorating the homes of some of Cassidy’s cronies. For four months, Watchman Cassidy further confessed, he had bundled out a few paintings each weekend for flattered friends. Value of the stolen art, all of it rejected paintings submitted for the annual Academy show, officials placed at no more than $800. But Cassidy’s cuts on the “second and third rate works” in the Academy storeroom had reduced their worth by “thousands of dollars.”