When bad things happen to good art

I feel for that poor woman who fell on Picasso’s “The Actor” at the Met last week, I really do. Of all the days to forget your V8! Her mishap led to a rip in the corner of the painting’s canvas, and a simultaneous shredding of the work’s value by approximately half (from $130 million to a scant $65, say the experts).

But when I was a kid my mother called me Grace for purely ironic reasons, and I’ve never lost my sympathies for the klutzy. And, as the New York Times points out, worse and more ridiculous things have happened.

Frankly, our art lover should be pretty happy she didn’t …

• Get busted by the police while stashing the painting in a Bronx dumpster after finding it attached to the back of her Velcro coat on 89th and Park.

• Administer the Heimlich Maneuver to a choking man only to thrust him (and that errant morsel) headfirst into the painting.

• Drunkenly mistake “The Actor” for an ex-boyfriend and throw a glass of wine (or a shoe) in his face.

• Trip while simultaneously walking and playing Game Boy—Tetris is that engrossing—and bash the side of her face against the painting, resulting in a bloody stain on “The Actor’s” arse and possible stitches to her own eyelid. Then, sue the Met for medical costs and mortification money.

• Do a spit take on it.

• Pee on anything.

I have never done any of the above. Exactly.