The Pitfalls of Having a $100 Million Painting on a Yacht

Not too long ago, a billionaire’s young children were frightened by one of the paintings on board his yacht. So, kids being kids, they decided to throw breakfast cereal on it – cornflakes, to be precise. Unfortunately that particular painting, a Jean-Michel Basquiat, was worth $110 million. Ouch. Of course, Basquiat would regularly destroy his own art while in a drug-fueled rage, so we’re sure he would have appreciated the irony.
Then there was the time that a stewardess on another yacht uncorked a bottle of champagne and dented a priceless Picasso. Talk about having a rough day at work. But this kind of thing happens a lot. After all, many super high-end yachts have millions of dollars worth of art on board – and not many crews are trained to safeguard that kind of merchandise. Fortunately, people like Pandora Mather-Lees, an Oxford-educated art historian, are doing something about it. She runs a $400 per day workshop teaching yacht crews about how to properly care for the insanely expensive art in their workplace – and what to do in an emergency.
You can read all about Mather-Lees’ work and some even more outrageous art-on-a-yacht anecdotes in this stellar Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/02/cornflakes-on-the-basquiat-perils-of-superyacht-art