Police in Canada Break Into an Art Gallery to Rescue Person in Distress, Turns Out the “Person” Was Part of an Art Exhibition
A gallery in Vancouver, Canada, became the subject of national attention after a bizarre misunderstanding saw firefighters and police officers break into the building to rescue an art exhibition.
Vancouver police were called to the Access Gallery on East Georgia Street after receiving a call on Friday night. The call came from a concerned citizen who claimed that there was someone inside the gallery. They thought they could see someone’s feet sticking out from behind a counter and believed that medical assistance was required, reports City News.
The gallery director, Saghi Ehteshamzadeh, claimed that she was informed by the police that someone was in the gallery, which she found very alarming. “I’m getting worried as the call goes on,” she said. “I was thinking I had locked the door and had the alarm on. How could someone get in?”
Failing to get in contact with the gallery, the police were left with little option but to call out firefighters to break into the art gallery. However, upon entry, they quickly realized that they had made a mistake, as the feet sticking out from behind the counter did not belong to anything human, or even alive, for that matter.
It was a sculpture
It turned out that the legs belonged to a sculpture called The Preparator by Alyssa Pierre. The art exhibit depicts an art handler, also known as an art perpetrator, kneeling over a crate with the top half of the body disappearing into it. The legs of the sculpture rest on the floor, and from outside the gallery, it no doubt looked like a real person’s legs, especially if the rest of the sculpture was hidden behind a counter.
The break-in ended up costing the gallery $1,000 in damages, something which Ehteshamzadeh says could have been avoided had the authorities listened. “One of the close friends of the artist lives across from the gallery,” she claimed. “She comes and tells police that this is actually an artwork, and they don’t take her word for it.”
She also said that the art piece was displayed on the gallery website and that a Google search would have proven that nobody was in any danger.
While the director admitted that the whole situation was “absurd and could be funny,” she pointed out that the police wasted time when they could have been helping those who actually needed help: “There are people who are actually deserving of this response, and they’re not receiving it. Yet those resources are being spent on non-emergencies.” The gallery has since filed a claim with the City of Vancouver regarding the damages but has yet to hear back.
(Featured image: Access Gallery)
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