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NAC director of communications Rosemary Thompson says surveillance footage shows two youths putting paint onto the eyes at approximately 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. The teens also put graffiti “tags” on two outside garage doors of the NAC. The painted tears were removed from the sculpture by Tuesday evening.

Perhaps the tears were painted as protest, or perhaps not. Regardless, the vandals should be charged by police, to demonstrate that it’s wrong to deface public works of art.

That said — and considering that the “damage” in this case was easily undone — the painted tears can serve as an eloquent comment on the racial tensions that followed the shooting death by police of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson.

Not everyone agrees that the vandalism can be taken as a comment, including Peterson’s widow, Kelly Peterson.

“You have given the vandals more credibility than they deserve by offering the possibility that this was a statement about racism,” Mrs. Peterson wrote to the Citizen on Monday, after early reports were published. “This was an act of vandalism. To even contemplate that it was anything else is beyond me.

“I know that the statue will be cleaned …I am also quite confident that the vandals will be caught. It is my fervent hope that they will be charged with vandalism, rather than glorified for starting a conversation about an issue far more important than their irresponsible, vile act.”

As an artist, Abernethy knows that once a sculpture is set in a public location it is vulnerable to acts of vandalism or protest,“and I delight in that,” she says.

“There’s a certain point where they take on a life of their own and that engages me endlessly, how people engage with the pieces and what they get out of it. That really is the point, and I’m fascinated. I think (the tears) might be a very potent symbol — not something that has to be there forever, but not wrong-headed.”

Thompson says the Peterson sculpture, with its piano and bench, is enormously popular with visitors. “People love to sit with him and play the piano … People adore that statue.”

Peterson was an internationally acclaimed musician, and one of many songs he recorded was titled Gentle Tears, which was released on the 1978 album The Paris Concert. He faced racism early in his career, and was committed to racial equality.

The National Arts Centre raised $300,000 in private donations to pay for the sculpture, in tribute to Peterson’s immense role in Canadian culture.

Photo by Wayne Cuddington / Ottawa Citizen

Video: Ruth Abernethy installs the Peterson sculpture in 2010.