Child damages Mark Rothko painting in Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam
Lianne Kolirin
, CNN
King Willem Alexander stands in front of Mark Rothko's Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 during a tour of Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen when it opened in November 2021.
Photo:
AFP/Koen Van Weel
A huge painting by Mark Rothko, thought to be worth tens of millions of dollars, has been removed from display in a Dutch museum after it was damaged by a visiting child.
Conservators will now have to repair the artwork,
Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8
, after it was "scratched" by a child visiting the Rotterdam gallery where it was on display.
The abstract painting from 1960, which measures 229cm high by 258.5cm wide with a depth of 4.7cm, was a centrepiece of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam - though it had been temporarily on display at the Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen as the museum is currently closed for a large-scale renovation.
The museum confirmed the incident in a statement emailed to CNN. It said: "The painting Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 by Mark Rothko has sustained superficial damage after a child touched the painting when it was on display. As a result, small scratches are visible in the unvarnished paint layer in the lower part of the painting.
"Conservation expertise has been sought in the Netherlands and abroad. We are currently researching the next steps for the treatment of the painting. We expect that the work will be able to be shown again in the future."
The museum declined to say how much the painting is worth, nor how much the damage might cost to repair - or who might be expected to foot the bill.
In response to a question about the painting's value on its website, the museum said the piece was bought in the 1970s for an undisclosed amount. It went on to explain: "An appraiser from an international auction house would be involved in a sale of an artist as famous as Rothko. The price is then very dependent on the condition, size, frame, etc."
Latvian-born American artist Rothko, who died in 1970, was best known for his "colour field" paintings. His works regularly fetch millions of dollars at auction. In November 2023 Untitled, 1968 sold for US$23.9 million ($40.2m) at Sotheby's in New York.
Museums and galleries are usually eager to promote visits from families with young children, in the hope of fostering an early interest in the arts. Many have programmes and workshops aimed at young visitors and actively encourage them - but children can, of course, be unpredictable.
Maxwell Blowfield, writer and creator of the popular
maxwell museums
newsletter, told CNN: "Every museum and gallery thinks hard about how to balance meaningful physical access to artworks and objects with keeping them safe. I'd say most have the balance right but accidents can still happen. It's impossible to prevent every potential incident, from visitors of all ages. Thankfully things like this are very rare compared to the millions of visits taking place everyday."
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NZ Herald
2 hours ago
- NZ Herald
The legacy of Sir Michael Hill: Jeweller, violinist, philanthropist
And now he's gone, aged 86. Despite the green smoothies and the vigorous health regime, cancer sadly caught up with him in the end earlier this week. Hill's story is so familiar that most Kiwis from his era will know it: The shy, picked-on boy who hated school but found solace learning the violin at primary school and later at Whangārei Boys' High. He went on to build a multi-million business with 287 stores in New Zealand, Australia and Canada. He dreamed of becoming a professional violinist, practising up to eight hours a day after he dropped out of school. Hearing about a Herald violin competition, his parents agreed to support him if he won. Young Michael played a Haydn violin concerto, came fourth and that was the end of that. Young Michael Hill dreamed of playing the violin as a career. He was put to work as an apprentice watchmaker in his Uncle Arthur's Whangārei jewellery shop. Uncle Arthur thought his nephew was pretty 'useless' and eventually sent him out to the shop front instead, a move he might one day have lived to regret. The teenage Michael loved the retail side, the thrill of a sale. He might have stayed there forever – he endured it for 20 years – had it not been for a devastating house fire. By then Hill had met the love of his life, Christine Roe, a young arts teacher from Yorkshire. They met in November 1964 and married four months later. Sir Michael and Lady Christine Hill shared a love of art and music. Photo / Mark Hill They had two children, Mark and Emma, and slowly built their Claude Megson-designed dream home, inspired by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, on the Whangārei Heads. The family went to the movies one night and came home to find it ablaze. Rescuing the violin and the jewels Shocked at the sight, Hill rushed inside to rescue his 150-year-old violin and his wife's jewellery. Those rescued items were to dominate the rest of his life. Devastated by the smouldering – and uninsured – remains of his house, he vowed that things would change. When his uncle refused to sell him the business, he opened his own shop – Michael Hill Jeweller – five doors away in 1979. But this shop was nothing like Uncle Arthur's or any other jewellery shop at the time for that matter. Gone were the traditional clocks, china, crystal, trophies, china and silver. Michael Hill Jeweller would sell only jewellery and watches. The shop had a wide entrance and the goods were temptingly displayed in generous-sized glass counters. Michael and Christine Hill, with their children Mark and Emma, outside their first shop in Whangārei in 1979. He did a turnover of $400,000 in his first year; six years later the turnover had increased to $7 million with the help of six shops and 70 staff. Hill might have had a late start but the 'useless' jeweller was on his way. He wrote in his book Toughen Up, by which time he was a multi-millionaire, 'I took him [the uncle] at his own game ... and I won.' The school drop-out went on to build a global business which made him rich enough to own a Stradivarius violin, build a beautiful home near Arrowtown, and establish The Hills, an 18-hole championship golf course and a nine-hole course known as The Farm, built on a 200ha estate dotted with stunning sculptures. The Hills golf resort near Arrowtown showing the clubhouse and the 18th hole. He used to drive his Aston Martin very fast on the private road between his home and the golf club, just for the thrill of it. Hill named his first superyacht (34m) VvS1, a jewellery term for an almost flawless diamond. That was something he had learned in life, he said. 'Nothing is perfect, that's what keeps you striving for more.' Sir Michael Hill on board his super yacht VVSI in Auckland's Viaduct Harbour in 2015. Photo / Nick Reed Some wacky ideas Hill's ambition was limited only by his imagination and, by all accounts, he had plenty of it. Family friend Anne Rodda described him as 'an entrepreneur, a dreamer and a big thinker'. 'There was a lot to Michael. That fizzy brain, the one that's always coming up with ideas, some brilliant, some absolutely unattainable and wacky. One out of 10 of his ideas would be absolutely brilliant and we'd go with that.' Rodda, a trained classical cellist, met Hill 25 years ago in her role as artistic manager for the Auckland Philharmonia. She heard he wanted to organise a violin competition and she helped make it happen. Since then she's been the competition's executive director. Anne Rodda, the executive director of the Michael Hill International Violin Competition, pictured with Sir Michael in 2023. Photo / James Robertson The resulting Michael Hill International Violin Competition (the next one is in May 2026) is now recognised as one of the most important events in the cultural calendar. Sixteen competitors, selected from 160 applicants around the world, are flown to Queenstown to audition in front of seven international judges. The finalists then perform in front of a packed Auckland Town Hall audience and the judges. In 2023, 350,000 people watched the livestreamed finalists' performance, and the competition auditions attracted 1.3m views online. Hill was not just invested financially in the competition but on a deep personal level, Rodda says. 'He was sitting in the front row of every competition. He would bounce up in the interval full of enthusiasm, sure that the last one he heard play was going to win. He sat through all the auditions as the panel selected the competitors.' In his own way, Hill was helping talented young musicians achieve what he had been unable to do, have a career as a professional artist. 'It's an incredible story,' Rodda says. 'The competition is what was closest to his soul and the thing that gave him the most resonance and the most joy in his life.' Although he never played professionally, his love of the violin endured. In his 80s he still practised Bach on his 190-year-old Italian violin, kayaked on Lake Hayes and played golf. Sir Michael Hill practising Bach on his violin at home in / Mark Hill In a moving video tribute to their violin mentor, the 11 first-prize winners from the violin competitions contributed to a recording of Bach's Chaconne in D minor in his memory, each playing a different part of the movement. 'Michael Hill ... jeweller' But the wider public rarely saw the dedicated violinist who practised for hours. Instead. many will remember Hill from his excruciating TV ads that ran through the 80s. 'Hello,' he'd say in his best nasal tone, smiling at the camera, 'Michael Hill ... (pause) jeweller.' He'd purse his lips to emphasis the 'M'. The ads were irritating, to the point where DJs would mock and impersonate him. The jeweller even tried to teach his daughter Emma to impersonate him, but no one could quite pull it off. "Hello, Michael If anyone pointed out to him how awful his ads were, Hill would laugh. He was the first to admit they were 'unbelievably boring and amateurish' and that he looked 'terrible' in those early ads. But the point was, they worked. Everyone in New Zealand knew who Michael Hill was and what he sold. And they came to buy his jewellery. In 1987, Michael Hill International listed on the NZX, buoyed by steadily increasing sales and successful shop openings. Four months later the stock market crashed, a day that became known as Black Monday (October 19). Kiwis investors lost fortunes overnight and billions of dollars were wiped off the value of New Zealand shares. (The company had a less eventful listing on the ASX in 2016). It could have been the end of Michael Hill, jeweller, but no. Several smaller jewellery businesses didn't survive and Hill saw it as an opportunity to pick up new business when the economy recovered. That year he won the Air New Zealand enterprise award for business entrepreneurship and made it to the big smoke, opening his largest shop in Auckland's Queen St. And he started moving into the Australian market. Sir Michael Hill at the company's flagship Queen St store in Auckland. Photo / Brett Phibbs Not one to arrive quietly, a September 1989 newspaper clipping trumpets: 'Michael Hill's sale a riot.' And indeed it was. Hundreds of bargain hunters broke into a Canberra shopping mall at 4am, eager to get first dibs on $1 diamond rings, stock that Michael Hill International wanted to clear from a shop before displaying its own range. By the time the shop opened, 700 people were crowded outside and a woman punched a shop assistant when she was told she could only buy one ring. It took four carloads of police and the mall security guards to clear the crowd. Australians were also incensed to see a series of jewellery bargains scrolling in a TV ad, accompanied by the piercing sound of a bugle playing The Last Post. The ad caused pandemonium at the Michael Hill head office as complaints poured in, the Australian Ministry of Defence was enraged, there were bomb threats in Sydney and it made front-page news. But, as Sir Michael said at the time, 'sales went through the roof'. In his own way, he was a showman, full of ideas – often quirky - designed to make a splash. In 1988, he hired a woman, clad in a black sports bra, a striped bikini bottom and black tights to show off $450,000 worth of jewellery at the maiden annual shareholder meeting in Whangārei. Hill wasn't one for clustering his shareholders into boring meeting rooms. Instead, he'd take them for a joyride on the Waitematā Harbour, entertained by a jazz band; or a cruise to a vineyard on Waiheke Island, or to Pakatoa Island, or to the Ellerslie Racecourse. Sir Michael Hill entertained his shareholders with a jazz band on the Quickcat catamaran in 1989, with his accountant John Ryer (left) and joint managing director Howard Bretherion (right). One time his shareholders met in an aircraft hangar in Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology (Motat). At each AGM they were usually told the joyous news that the company could expect another tax-paid profit, and that new shops were about to be added to the fast-growing chain. For the company's 10th AGM in 1997, 250 shareholders were loaded onto a train in Auckland bound for Waimauku. Hill, nattily dressed in pinstriped pants and sporting a red tie decorated with yellow worms, served bubbly and wine on the journey to his faithful followers. Again the news was good: a plan to open 100 stores and move to other countries as the market became saturated. Former Herald writer Bernadette Rae was on the train that day. As she put it: 'So many fingers to ring, so many necks to chain.' In the early 1990s, everything Michael-Hill-jeweller touched seemed to turn to gold. (He famously sold his wife's engagement rings four times after they were admired, each time replacing it with a bigger stone). Sir Michael and Lady Christine Hill at the opening of their revamped Whangārei store in 2013. Sir Michael famously sold his wife's engagement ring four times. Then came the stumble of the shoe era. He bought the assets from a Christchurch shoe company and by 1992 had added nine shoe shops to his 41 jewellery stores. The trouble was they not only didn't make money, they lost money, a lot. By 1994 all nine shoe stores had closed and 'Michael Hill ... cobbler' was no more. He later acknowledged that the foray into shoes was a 'disaster' and that the company needed to stick to jewellery and watches. Undeterred by the footwear trip-up, the group continued to expand. Well on his way to saturating the Australian market, Hill based his family in Queensland's Sanctuary Cove in the mid 1990s, with his launch Rough Diamond parked at the back door. 'A wimpy thing to do' He couldn't understand why more people didn't want to get into retail. By 2009, he had 250 stores in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, opening new stores so fast he couldn't find enough staff to fill them. He was puzzled why Kiwis were willing to work in hospitality but thought a male working in a jewellery shop was a 'wimpy, poncy thing to do'. So he wrote Toughen Up (the proceeds of which went to Cure Kids) as a recruitment tool. He told me during an interview that his CEO earned three, possibly four, times more than the (then) Prime Minister John Key. Don't ever suggest working in a shop is a dead-end career, he said. By then he had invested in Joe's Garage in Arrowtown and had no shortage of applicants wanting to work in the cafe, but he was struggling to find good people to join his jewellery empire. Take his group diamond buyer at the time, Galina Hirtzel, he said, a girl from Invercargill who stated on $10 an hour. She was now (in 2009) flying round the world spending $100m of the company's money on diamonds every year. He thought her hippy long hair and floaty dress tricked merchants into not realising she was a tough negotiator. Knighted in 2011 for services to business and the arts, Hill was exhilarated by the company's growth and didn't mind talking it up, describing himself on one interview as 'the Ferrari of the jewellery business'. He was a businessman in the quick lane overtaking the rest of the jewellery world. At the same time he told business journalists he wanted 'controlled, sensible growth'. He and Lady Christine built a home on land that used to be a deer farm. Locals nicknamed it 'Hillbrook' and some took exception to the building, complaining it was too 'pink'. That caused the council to request a colour change; the Hills held firm. The 'terracotta' house later won the South Regional Architectural Award (for its colour scheme), a victory that used to make Hill chuckle. The Hills are a close family. Children Emma and Mark, and the four grandchildren, all live on the estate, with sculptures by Mark Hill among other artworks strategically placed through The Hills. Sculptor Mark Hill with his sculpture "Emergence", made from hand-forged corten steel, at The Hills Golf Club. He preferred to be low key and with the family when he was on holiday, often escaping Otago's winter to cruise in the Pacific on The Beast, his 40m adventure catamaran. In the summer The Beast's captain, Andy Grocott, who has worked for 'the boss' since 2006, would sail to remote places in New Zealand's Far North so the Hills could fish, swim, hike, dive and kayak. Jetskis were not their style. Sir Michael Hill and family preferred to explore remote places on The Beast. Photo / Michael Craig As tributes poured in this week, members of The Hills golf club penned their own. 'Rest peacefully Sir Michael,' it said at the end. 'You will forever be part of The Hills.' Beneath is one of the many cartoons he drew for his own and others' amusement. It shows an aviator clinging to a rocket as it zooms into space. Underneath Hill has signed off with the quote, 'Live every day as if it was going to be your last, for one day you're sure to be right.' Jane Phare is the New Zealand Herald's deputy print editor. Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
‘Most generous heart': Founder of New Zealand's first Samoan language early childcare centre dies
Jan Taouma co-founded the first Samoan early childhood centre in New Zealand, the A'oga Fa'a Samoa, in Auckland in the 1980s. RNZ Photo / Cole Eastham-Farrelly Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech. Jan Taouma co-founded the first Samoan early childhood centre in New Zealand, the A'oga Fa'a Samoa, in Auckland in the 1980s. RNZ Photo / Cole Eastham-Farrelly One of the Auckland Samoan community's biggest advocates for maintaining the Samoan language and culture in New Zealand has died. Jan Taouma, co-founder of the country's first Pacific Island language early childhood centre, is being remembered for her dedication and work in the ECE sector that spanned over 40 years. She died in Auckland over the weekend, surrounded by her seven children. She was in her 77. Known affectionately as 'Mama Jan,' Taouma helped to establish the Aoga Fa'a Samoa early childcare centre in Auckland in the early 1980s, after recognising the importance of keeping the language alive among New Zealand-born Samoans.
RNZ News
4 days ago
- RNZ News
Israel has begun airdrops in Gaza but aid groups say it's not enough. Here's the reality
By Allyson Horn for ABC News A Palestinian woman carries a bag of food on her head in the al-Mawasi camp in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP After weeks of global condemnation sparked by images of starving people in Gaza, Israel on Sunday announced changes to aid operations in the strip. It would start airdropping pallets of food in the territory, it said, as well as make it easier for humanitarian groups to bring trucks of aid to Gaza. But after just two days there has been criticism that the airdrops are expensive, ineffective and dangerous. One aid agency called it a "smokescreen" and a "distraction". Humanitarian groups have also said far more is needed to feed the roughly 2 million people inside Gaza. So why has Israel announced them, and how much food will they really deliver to hungry Palestinians? On Sunday, Israel and a coalition of other countries, including Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, began airdropping parcels of food in Gaza. At the same time, the Israeli military announced military operations - including bombing and fighting - would "pause" for 10 hours a day in different parts of Gaza, to make it easier to distribute aid. Israel's military said activity would "pause" from 10am to 8pm local time in three populated areas, until further notice. The military also said it would create "humanitarian corridors" to provide secure routes the United Nations and other aid agencies could use to take food through the strip. Designated secure routes for convoys delivering food and medicine will be in place between 6am and 11pm, it said. People gather as a C-130 Hercules military transport aircraft drops humanitarian aid on the northern Gaza Strip on 27 July, 2025. Photo: AFP / Bashar Taleb The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which coordinates aid deliveries in Gaza, said the population needed more than 62,000 tonnes of food aid per month. That amount would just cover people's most basic needs, the WFP said. WFP said in the past two months it had been able to deliver about 22,000 tonnes of food aid - just one-sixth of what was needed. "The quantity of food aid delivered to date is still a tiny fraction of what a population of over 2 million people need to survive," it said in a recent update. Nearly one in three people in Gaza have not eaten for days at a time, the WFP said. About 500 trucks of aid - including food and other supplies like medical equipment - entered Gaza each day on average before the war, according to the UN. Many aid groups say a full ceasefire, to allow for aid to be distributed over land, is the only way to address the hunger crisis. It's hard to give an exact answer to that question. But humanitarian organisations say it won't be enough. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the airdrop it did on Sunday consisted of seven pallets carrying supplies such as flour, sugar and canned food. It did not say how much food exactly each pallet contained, or how many people they were expected to feed. While it's hard to know how much food will be delivered on the ground, previous airdrop expeditions have given us some insight. Last year the ABC joined a UK RAF airdrop flight over Gaza and learned that each trip parachuted 12 pallets of food - weighing about 11 tonnes total - into Gaza. At the time, 11 tonnes was equivalent to just one truck full of food. On Sunday, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates parachuted 25 tonnes of aid into Gaza, according to Jordanian officials. That would amount to about two trucks' worth of humanitarian aid. On Monday, an extra 20 pallets of aid were airdropped, said Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), which is responsible for coordinating aid into Gaza. A displaced Palestinian child sits next to a pot of lentil soup that he received at a food distribution point in Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip. Photo: AFP / OMAR AL-QATTAA One of the issues with using airdrops to distribute aid is that it's difficult to make sure it gets to the people who need it most, said Olga Cherevko, the spokesperson for the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Gaza. There have also been reports of some Palestinians being injured by the air drops, she added. "Any effort to provide aid to people here is a welcome thing," she said. "But as we have previously said … the most efficient way is to bring aid by land." Palestinians in Gaza also told the ABC they were worried they could not access the airdropped supplies. One man, who only gave his name as Salah, said he was trying to support 14 members of his family, and could not reach the aid as it was being dropped in areas far from where he was living. "The distribution via airplanes is difficult - the crowds of people, it is very difficult to reach it, especially the elderly and the sick," he said. "There should be a different way, a solution that will benefit everyone." Samah Shahin, who lives with health issues including diabetes and high blood pressure, said she and her family - including children and grandchildren - hadn't eaten for two days. "What they send from air, neither me nor the people in the camp benefit from it," she said. "The aid that arrives is stolen, we don't get to see anything from the aid … we want our share." Aid organisations said there were a few issues, including Israel blocking aid entering Gaza for weeks at a time and challenges with movement inside the strip making it difficult to distribute supplies. Israel blocked all aid entering the strip for 11 weeks, from March 2 to May 21. "The Gaza Strip has been deprived of the proper scale of assistance for months," Antoine Renard, the World Food Programme country director for Palestine who is currently in Gaza, told Radio National Breakfast. "That means that people are lacking any of the basics." Last week more than 100 humanitarian agencies warned mass starvation was spreading across the strip. The World Health Organization (WHO) labelled it a man-made crisis - a claim disputed by Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Hamas had been stealing aid and impeding its distribution, and also blamed groups such as the UN for failing to deliver the aid. Israel claimed the UN had left hundreds of truckloads of food waiting at depots inside the Gaza border - criticism the UN and humanitarian agencies have rejected. The organisations accused Israel of failing to provide safe routes for convoys to travel through Gaza, making it too dangerous for staff to pick up supplies and take them to the areas needed. The head of the UN's Palestinian aid agency, Philippe Lazzarini, described the resumption of airdrops as a "distraction" and "smokescreen". "Driving aid through is much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper and safer. It's more dignified for the people of Gaza," he posted on X. Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, which conducted some of the first airdrops, also said the aerial aid was not a substitute for delivery by land. Aid agencies said more than 100 truckloads of aid had been collected since Sunday, but warned far more was needed. "This is progress, but vast amounts of aid are needed to stave off famine and a catastrophic health crisis," said Tom Fletcher, the United Nations' Emergency Relief Coordinator, in a statement issued overnight. COGAT said 200 trucks of aid were collected and distributed on Monday. An additional 260 trucks had entered Gaza and were awaiting collection and distribution, along with hundreds of others still queued for UN pick-up, it said. - ABC News
