8 Reasons Why Climate Activists Attack Artwork

It’s been almost two years since a pair of climate activists from Just Stop Oil walked into London’s National Gallery and hurled tomato soup at Van Gough’s Sunflowers before gluing themselves to the wall by the painting.

This trend has continued, with other notable artworks targeted by climate activists worldwide, including Claude Monet’s Grainstacks, Degas’ Little Dancer, and Mona Lisa.

At the time of writing, climate protests have vandalized at least 40 notable artworks.

Destroying Art Grabs Attention

There is also a long history of art being attacked by resistance movements as a form of protest.

In 1914, Suffragette Mary Richardson slashed Diego Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus, housed at the London National Gallery, in response to Emmeline Pankhurst’s arrest. Richardson said, “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst, who is the most beautiful character in modern history.”

Speaking to Euronews in 2022, Just Stop Oil spokesman Alex De Koning said that the group was “inspired” by the tactics of resistance moments of the past. “It works. We know they work. That’s why we’re doing the same.” De Koning said.

Frustration Over Climate Inattention

On August 18, 2022, two members of the Italian group Ultima Generazione (Last Generation) glued their hands to the base of the statue Laocoön and His Sons at the Vatican Museums while holding a banner that read “Last Generation: No gas and no carbon” in Italian.

Excavated in Rome in 1506, the statue, believed to have been carved in Rhodes between 30 and 40 BC, shows the priest of Apollo and his sons being attacked by two sea serpents.

In a statement by Ultima Generazione after the demonstration, the group said it had chosen the statue because of its symbolic narrative.

The group asserted that scientists and activists were like Laocoön, who tried to warn his fellow Trojans not to bring the wooden horse left outside the city’s gates by the Greeks inside during the Trojan War. However, politicians ignored him, which resulted in Troy’s ruin.

Much like how scientists and climate activists warned governments about the dangers of fossil fuels and climate change for decades and were ignored due to political pressure and corporate interests.

There’s No Such Thing as Bad Publicity

The Mona Lisa (which is a lot smaller than you think it is) has a long history of being targeted by activists. Da Vinci’s smirking masterwork lives behind a protective glass shield after acid was thrown on it in the 1950s.

Over the past few years, La Gioconda has become the recurring target of attacks from climate activists. Most recently, protestors from the French protest group Riposte Alimentaire (Food Counterattack) filmed themselves tossing pumpkin soup at the painting while yelling: “What is more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food?”

In May 2022, the masterwork had cake smeared across its protective glass by a man disguised as an older woman in a wheelchair. The man urged shocked onlookers to “think of the Earth” while security led them from the scene.

Arguably the most famous and treasured works of art in the world, it’s obvious why it would be a target for activists. It gets column inches, and in the social media age, you have the added benefit of any video footage of the act going viral, spreading the message even further.

News outlets pick up these videos and spin them into a million think pieces on each end of the political spectrum. As P.T. Barnum allegedly said, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity,” and these stories inevitably dominate the news cycle for days.

Why Do Climate Activists Use Orange Paint and Food?

UK group Just Stop Oil and their European affiliates in the A22 movement are known for spraying targets with orange spray paint or covering them with orange foodstuffs, like when a pair of Just Stop Oil Protestors threw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Museum in London on October 14, 2022.

De Koning explained to EuroNews that they continued to use orange for consistency. It’s the “color they chose,” so it was “good to stick with it.” He added, “Orange is also a bright color, a symbol of hope. That’s what Just Stop Oil wants to convey, as well as how urgent the climate crisis is. We do have hope that we can tackle it through mass civil resistance.”

Museums Receive Funding From Oil and Gas Companies

Although many major museums have cut ties with oil companies in recent years, thanks in part to pressure from climate activists, some still receive corporate sponsorship from fossil fuel companies.

In December, The British Museum received £50 million ($63 million) from oil giant BP in a ten-year deal as part of its billion-pound development plans.

Speaking to The Guardian, Chris Garrard, co-director of campaign group Culture Unstained, said the deal was “astonishingly out of touch” and “completely indefensible.”

“The only way you can sign up for a new sponsorship deal with a planet-wrecking fossil fuel company in 2023 is by burying your head in the sand, pretending the climate crisis isn’t happening, and ignoring the almost complete rejection of fossil fuel funding by the cultural sector in recent years,” he said.

Climate Change Is a Threat to Art

In June, a report from The Foundation for Advancement in Conservation and the National Endowment for the Humanities called for “immediate action” to address climate change, which threatens cultural heritage sites and collections.

“The function of art is for people to be able to understand the world that they live in and reflect on the human condition, but big art isn’t fulfilling that function,” New York Extinction Rebellion member Shayok Mukhopadhyay said. “That’s the reason for us to be in museums: to tell people that we are in the middle of an emergency, and it is now time for you to face that emergency.”

Museums, however, insist that protests are attacks on priceless artworks and not the institutions housing them.

After activists Joanna Smith and Tim Martin from Declare Emergency smeared paint on the case surrounding Degas’ Little Dancer, Aged Fourteen, on April 2023, at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the museum’s Director Kaywin Feldman said, “We unequivocally denounce this physical attack on one of our works of art.”

The gallery where it was housed was closed for half a day, and no damage was done to the statue. The activists received jail time and substantial fines for tossing acrylic paint at a plexiglass case.

It Creates a Counter Narrative

Speaking to National Geographic, Favianna Rodriguez, president of The Center for Cultural Power, which uses art to promote action on social issues, said finds protest is like theater, creating “a counter-narrative.”

Rodriguez also hopes protestors would also like to see a more intersectional approach taken to the demonstrations, as museums have historically exploited people of color,and many of the communities misrepresented in museums are also most likely to be impacted by climate change.

“A lot of these museums are holding things that were stolen during colonization — sacred, sacred objects,” Rodriguez said. “These places are not just contested by climate activists. There’s been a lot of contestation around their collections, how they’ve collected, and what kind of point of view they have shown.”