Intern/Installation FAIL

I'm currently an intern at an art gallery. They've been kind enough to give me another title (Registrar) because I've overstayed the usual semester and am heading into my 6th month there. This week the gallery directors and manager are at the art fairs in New York so for a couple of days this week I'm there alone which I totally love. It's quiet and I can listen to music and bang out a bunch of busy work. When people come in I'm much more comfortable talking to them when I know nobody is listening. When comfortable I can talk a blue streak and I say some pretty good shit. Today I used the word "didactic". No big deal. (Shines fingernails on front of shirt.) I was talking just such a blue streak to a young male gallery patron today. He was examining a sculpture named "Rift" that's currently on display in the gallery . It's a piece of packed plaster shaped into a tapered rectangle about 5 inches tall. The chalk was packed onto a board which is split down the middle. One side of the board was dropped about 2 inches thus creating the rift. Picture the scene in Indian Jones and the Search for the Holy Grail when someone pisses off God and the ground in the temple splits. But smaller. And white. And in a gallery. The work is about letting things lie as they fall. After the one half of the board drops the piece is done. The artist doesn't go back and retouch, at that point it's out of his control. The piece isn't fixed in any way so it's basically just a pile of loose chalked packed together and sitting on a pedestal. But shaplier. And more conceptual. Back to the chap examining it. I was explaining the work and he was looking closely at the sculpture. I turned to look at my computer for a moment, and then looked back and homeboy was KNUCKLE DEEP in the gypsum. He pulled his fingers out really quickly, froze and looked at me with his mouth wide open. I'm sure I looked just as shocked. "The sign says 'Please Touch'!" he stammered. I got up from my chair and walked slowly over to where he was standing. Directly in front of him on the podium that "Rift" was crafted upon is a sign that very clearly reads 'Please Don't Touch'. I point to it and look at his hand which is covered in chalk. I still can't really talk at this point. He was equally as speechless. He begins to stammer an apology and mentions he thought it odd that there was a sign inviting him to touch a piece of art. I managed to laugh as I fought back tears and went into the back room to get him a paper towel to wipe his hand off. I pick up where I left off in my explanation of the work, but I knew at that point it sounded forced. Mostly because I was almost crying. He wanted to get the fuck out of there as fast as possible and I needed to call my fucking boss. He continued to apologize as he walked out the door. I hated the idea that another person was scared to walk into a gallery ever again, but this dude had every reason to be. I mean, how can you read a sign so WRONG? He should be scared to be pretty much EVERYWHERE, and we(THE WORLD) should be more scared because his mind reads things in OPPOSITE. It's like an episode of House. In my humble opinion he may be a menace to society. He gets into his car, sees a red octagonal sign and SPEEDS THE FUCK UP. He walks around pulling the tags off of mattresses. When the oxygen mask pops out of the ceiling of the airplane he grabs one away from a kid and covers his own mouth. This man walks down the street popping the silica gel packets from his recent running shoe purchase like Clorets. He must be stopped! I should have called the police. But they probably would have tripped over the other un-fixed chalk sculpture in their effort to nab the clumsy assailant.
I suppose there is something to be said about the fact this this dude kind of illustrated an artistic point. The work was impermanent by nature. It will never leave the gallery and when he de-installs his show in a week it will be destroyed. I talked to the artist about it and he's going to come fix it next week. These things happen with this type of work. He had a piece at a museum and the cleaning crew vacuumed it up by mistake. That being said, this is another reason why a gallery curator might look at you funny the next time you walk into their space. You present a clear and present danger to any type of art installation that might be hanging out around the gallery. I was at the Pompidou Center in Paris last month and they have a Tara Donovan toothpick cube there. They only allowed 3 people in the room with it at once and you can bet the docents were watching you like a hawk the whole time. At one point one of the docents comes in dragging a more senior member of the museum staff. As she gesticulated wildly and exclaimed in French she pointed to one corner of the cube which definitely looked less pointy than the rest. Apparently somebody in a big coat had been careless. These thing happen I guess, but FUCK why did it have to be when I working alone??