Chris Ofili “The Holy Virgin Mary” / paint

(In 1999, a 72-year-old man named Dennis Heiner smeared white paint on this work while it was on view at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Heiner had apparently smuggled the paint into the museum using a small hand lotion tube. He later told police he’d attacked the work because it was “blasphemous.”

The work, which had caused a great deal of controversy due to Ofili’s chosen materials (which included elephant dung and collaged pornographic images), was able to be restored.)