A Naughty Young Man

...Has placed his gum on the surface of a Helen Frankenthaler at the Detroit Institute of the Arts, staining a $1.5 mil painting.

As every schoolboy knows, the fallout of this behavior is best described by a Python sketch:

Janet: Just like my Kevin. Show him an exhibition of early eighteenth-century Dresden Pottery and he goes berserk. No, I said no, and I meant no! (smacks unseen infant again) This morning we were viewing the early Flemish Masters of the Renaissance and Mannerist Schools, when he gets out his black aerosol and squirts Vermeer's Lady At A Window!

Marge: Still it's not as bad as spitting is it?

Janet: (firmly) No, well Kevin knows (slaps the infant) that if he spits at a painting I'll never take him to all exhibition again.

Marge: Ralph used to spit - he could hit a Van Gogh at thirty yards. But he knows now it's wrong - don't you Ralph? (she looks down) Ralph! Stop it Stop it Stop chewing that Turner! You are ... (she disappears from shot) You are a naughty, naughty, vicious little boy. (smack; she comes back into shot holding a copy of Turner's Fighting Temeraire in a lovely gilt frame but all tattered) Oh, look at that! The Fighting Temeraire - ruined! What shall I do?

Janet: (taking control) Now don't do a thing with it love, just put it in the bin over there.

Marge: Really?

Janet: Yes take my word for it, Marge. Kevin's eaten most of the early nineteenth-century British landscape artists, and I've learnt not to worry. As a matter of fact, I feel a bit peckish myself. (she breaks a bit off the Turner) Yes...