In 1970 August Rodin’s The Thinker was blown off its pedastel with dynamite. The statue itself was damged – feet blown off and pieces of a legs shattered.
To the Museum’s credit they put the staue back on a pedestel with all its damage still in tact and documented in the life of the statue itself and becoming also a commentary about the times – student protests, Viet Nam, invasion of Cambodia.
Yet the most intersting fact of the event is that no one knows who did it and why, to this day.
It remind me of rock art vandlism out west. The national ans stte parks preserve the defacing and do not try to fix it. And, like the bomber or bombers in 1970 in Cleveland, we know nothing definitive of the motives and meaning of rock art either.
Similarly, on the level of stupid vandalism, it’s all the same.