Kansas Family’s Insurance Pays After Boy Topples Sculpture

A Kansas city has received $107,000 from a family’s insurance company after a 5-year-old boy accidentally knocked over a $132,000 sculpture at a community center.

Sarah Goodman tells the Kansas City Star the incident happened last month at Overland Park’s Tomahawk Ridge Community Center while her family was attending a wedding reception. Goodman says she didn’t see the artwork hit the ground but her son suffered minor injuries when it fell. She says the sculpture was unprotected at the crowded center.

City spokesman Sean Reilly says the work was on loan to the city and that it was obligated to file a claim with its insurance company for the damage.

Goodman said the insurance company wanted her family to pay the $132,000 to cover the damage.

She says her children were well-supervised and she wasn’t negligent.

Overland Park spokesman Sean Reilly says the city plans to send $99,000 to the artist of “Aphrodite di Kansas City,” which was damaged in May at the city’s Tomahawk Ridge Community Center. He says that’s the amount the artist, Bill Lyons, would have received if the sculpture sold at the center’s art fair.

A video showed the child wrapping his arms around the piece and then struggling to hold it up as it fell to the floor.

The Kansas City Star reports the boy’s mother said Saturday she had not been told by her insurance company that the money was paid.