Tonight we completed our fourth annual Museum Murder Mystery Game. This year, Victory was found dead just before Late Night began. Visitors searched the galleries for the body and integrated the suspects to determine who did it, with what object, and in which gallery. Below is the news report from their findings.
Museum Murder Solved!
Isabelle Lemonnier Confesses
Edouard Manet, Portrait of Isabelle Lemonnier with a Muff, c. 1879, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Algur H. Meadows and the Meadows Foundation, Incorporated, 1978.1
17 JULY – Chaos has reigned for the past few hours here at the Dallas Museum of Art. Following the violent death of Victory, a prominent (and notoriously annoying) member of the collection, staff and visitors conducted an intensive inquiry. Lily Davenport, summer intern and chief investigator, explained that “we interviewed every artwork under suspicion for Victory’s murder, and checked on almost all of the potential weapons on display in the Museum.” In the end, one of those suspects broke down and confessed, under close questioning regarding the timing of her walk home.
Isabelle Lemonnier admitted to strangling Victory with an Etruscan composite necklace in the Indonesian Art Gallery. An unrepentant Isabelle reportedly remarked during her interrogation, “It was easy. I let everyone think I had taken Lady in a Red Hat up to her portrait, when really I just circled around to the third floor, by way of the Barrel Vault. The necklace looked as though it would fit in my muff, so I took it out of its case in the Ancient Mediterranean Gallery and went up to the Indonesian section to wait for Victory. I got her from behind as she came through the door—I doubt she ever even saw me.”
When this reporter asked about her motive, Isabelle cited Victory’s “disruptive and obnoxious” behavior and her own longstanding envy of the other artwork’s vocal self-confidence. Said the killer, “She always acted like she was so much better than me, than all of us. And the self-promotion never really let up. So it was just the icing on the cake when she interrupted Buddha’s meditation session to ask about dealing with envious friends. I knew she was talking about me, and it made me so angry!”
Museum staff did not comment on Isabelle’s eventual fate, as artwork-on-artwork violence is comparatively rare, and little judicial precedent exists. “It’s much more common for human visitors to pose a threat to the art,” said an investigator from the curatorial department who wishes to remain nameless. “I don’t even know where to begin writing this incident report.”
Lily Davenport is the Summer Intern for Adult Programming at the DMA
