The logistical accomplishment of moving the 130-piece, priceless exhibit Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs from London to tour the United States was amplified last month when a robust, one piece contemporary sculpture was destroyed on its way to Miami aboard a Continental Airlines flight and no one knows how.
The fiberglass depiction of a woman on an inner tube raft entitled “Survival of Serena” had previously traveled to Venice and Beijing without incident. But when the art handlers employed by Carole Feuerman arrived at the Miami International Airport warehouse to load the $300,000 item for display at Art Miami, they found it demolished.
The sculpture had been crushed into pieces on its way from Venice, Italy to Miami International Airport.
“It's almost fate,” Feuerman said, noting the irony in her piece's name.
The artwork's imagery was meant to represent the survival of Venice, a city that has been drowning as the soil subsides and floods increase over the past two generations.
Made of oil-painted fiberglass and resin, the 4-foot by 12-foot piece was seen by hundreds of thousands of people in art shows in Italy and China. Feuerman spent three years working on the piece, adding carefully detailed water droplets made of epoxy on the woman's painted skin before completing it in 2006.
The artwork was found at an MIA warehouse Nov. 26 by two employees of David Jones Fine Art Services who had been sent to recover the crate shipped on Continental Airlines.
“I've never seen any [artwork] totally destroyed like that,” said Aaron Giller, one of the Jones employees who told local reporters he has spent eight years in the business.
Now multiply by 3,000 years.
According to American Airlines Cargo president David Brooks, the contract to move the massive, fragile and priceless Tut exhibit from London to Dallas was the largest single shipment AA Cargo had ever handled and its most valuable.
AA Cargo was entrusted with shipping more than 130 artifacts — some weighing as much as 1,750 pounds — for the U.S. encore tour that includes Dallas and two yet-to-be-named cities.
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