Woman attacks Gauguin painting because it is ‘very homosexual’

A woman who attacked a Paul Gauguin painting in Washington, D.C.’s National Gallery claimed she did it because it is “very homosexual.”

Screaming, “This is evil,” a woman tried to pull Gauguin’s Two Tahitian Women from a gallery wall last week and banged on the picture’s clear plastic covering, said Pamela Degotardi of New York, who was there.

“She was really pounding it with her fists,” Degotardi said. “It was like this weird surreal scene that one doesn’t expect at the National Gallery.”

The Washington Post reported that gallery spokeswoman Deborah Ziska said no damage to the 1899 painting was immediately apparent after the 4:45 p.m. incident, but she said a more thorough examination is being conducted.

In the painting, both breasts of one woman are exposed, as is one of the second woman’s breasts.

Susan Burns, 53, of Virginia, who allegedly attacked the painting, was “immediately restrained and detained” by the museum’s federal protection services officers, who charged her with destruction of property and attempted theft, Ziska said in a statement.

The painting’s alleged attacker was “tackled by a guy who was visiting the gallery,” Degotardi said. She described him as a social worker from the Bronx.

Ellen Goldstein of Washington, who was visiting the exhibit with Degotardi, said she was in an adjacent room at the time and heard “screaming and shouting.” The incident “was a scary, scary thing for everyone who was there,” Goldstein said.

The painting, which measures 37 by 28 1/2 inches, is on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is part of a 120-piece Gauguin exhibit that opened at the National Gallery in late February. Titled Gauguin: Maker of Myth, it is to run through June 5.