According to Bonnema, the ATM that was in the front facade was completely blown out of the wall, and a window next to it was also shattered. “There is great chaos in the space behind it,” says Bonnema.
Handball prizes
The museum space contains, among other things, a display case with handball prizes, which have not disappeared, but are damaged. “It now looks like a battlefield in that part of the museum,” says Bonnema, who runs the museum with volunteers. “It wasn’t about things from the museum. They were really about the ATM.”
According to Bonnema, it was a ‘pointless explosion’ anyway, because the banknotes in the ATM are in cassettes and become unusable due to paint as soon as the cassette comes under pressure, for example due to an explosion. “It was a terribly loud bang. It scares you, but in the end it leads to nothing.”
The Keats Museum will be closed in the coming days to assess the damage and repair it where possible. The chairman expects that it may take some time before the museum can open again. “It needs to be cleaned, rebuilt and furnished.”
