Child Punctures Magritte Painting With Pinecone at Israel Museum

A young child punctured René Magritte's 1959 painting "The Castle of the Pyrenees" with a pinecone taken from the museum's garden at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The surrealist work, depicting a castle-topped rock floating above a crashing wave, has been in the conservation lab for two weeks. Sharon Tager, director of the conservation lab, stated that the first stage involves treating the substrate and canvas to restore the dent, followed by stitching and treating the oil paint layers. The process will take several weeks, but Tager expects the damage to be nearly invisible afterward. The painting was not protected by glass or a motion sensor; a museum guard witnessed the incident, which occurred in seconds while the child's family was nearby. The child is five or six years old. Similar incidents include a child shattering a Canaanite jar at the Hecht Museum in 2024 and a child scratching a Rothko painting at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in 2025. In 2023, an American tourist intentionally smashed two Roman sculptures at the Israel Museum.