An installation by the artist Ai Weiwei at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, showing him breaking an ancient vase.CreditDaniel Azoulay/Perez Art Museum Miami, via European Pressphoto Agency

As part of a deal with prosecutors, the man accused of smashing a vase by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in a museum here pleaded guilty Wednesday to criminal mischief but avoided any more jail time beyond the two days he spent behind bars after his arrest.

Maximo Caminero, a 51-year-old artist from the Dominican Republic, will be on probation for 18 months and serve 100 hours of community service by teaching children how to paint. Mr. Caminero also must pay restitution of $10,000, the appraised value of the vase he dropped on the floor of the Pérez Art Museum Miami on Feb. 16 in what he said was a political act.

“I was wrong,” Mr. Caminero wrote in a letter to Judge Maria Elena Verde of Miami-Dade Circuit Court, which he read aloud in court. “I think about what I did every day, and I find it hard to live with what I did because it still haunts me.”

The third-degree felony to which he pleaded could have sent him to prison for up to five years. The state attorney’s office noted that the plea agreement was “in accord with the victim’s wishes,” a reference to the Pérez museum, which had opened to great fanfare only two months before the vase was destroyed and whose caretakers were deeply embarrassed by the incident....Continue Reading

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