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Kid knocks over $15,000 ‘Zootopia’ Lego sculpture, turns it into art

Disaster or heroic act?

 

Jay Hathaway

Internet Culture

Posted on Jun 1, 2016   Updated on May 26, 2021, 4:36 pm CDT

A giant Lego sculpture of Zootopia‘s fox protagonist, Nick Wilde, took three days and three nights to build. It was only on display at a museum for an hour before a small child knocked it over and broke it into thousands of pieces. Oh, damn! But also: Good? 

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The incident reportedly went down on Sunday morning at a Lego expo in Ningbo, China. The artist, identified by CCTV News as “Zhao,” responded to the destruction of his work by posting a series of photos of the construction process, followed by a shot of all that hard work scattered on the floor at the whim of a destructive four-year-old. 

He didn’t ask the tiny tyrant’s parents to pay for the statue, valued at more than $15,000, CCTV reported, because “the child did not intend to break it.” But maybe the child should have. Does the world need a $15,000 statue of Nick Wilde? Did a man need to give up three entire days of his life to stack and snap it into existence? Is the story of a preschool King Kong clobbering it into bits more interesting? 

A theory, maybe a dumb one: If cracks and wear give art its character and value, being smashed to Lego smithereens gives poor Nick the best story of all. 

That’s no comfort to the artist, though, because the story would probably be a tough sell to potential buyers of elaborate Lego Disney fanart. If I were a museum director, though, I’d rope off the wreckage and display it in this precise state. After all, Legos are made to be played with. 

H/T Mashable

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*First Published: Jun 1, 2016, 4:27 pm CDT