Two climate activists set out on Wednesday morning for a beautiful painting by Monet on display at the National Museum in Sweden. They wanted to convey the urgency of the environmental crisis – pollution, global warming and other man-made disasters – that could turn the artist’s beautiful gardens in Giverny into a distant memory. So the young demonstrators followed what has become a familiar scenario: glue a hand to the artwork’s protective glass and smear it with red paint.
In April at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, two eco-activists splattered paint on the cabinet surrounding a 19th-century Degas sculpture, “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen,” and drew pine trees and frowning faces on the plinth with red and black paint – symbolic of blood and oil.
Similar scenes have unfolded in more than a dozen museums in the past year, leaving cultural workers on edge and unsure how to prevent climate activists from targeting vulnerable artworks. Last weekend, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan was targeted for a second time, when more than 40 activists occupied galleries and quietly held signs reading “No art on a dead planet.” Meanwhile, security, preservation and insurance costs are rising, according to cultural institutions that have experienced attacks.
In some cases, they sue the activists for damages. In February, Vienna prosecutors dropped their case against protesters who dipped a 1915 Klimt painting in black liquid at the Leopold Museum after the protesters agreed to pay about $2,200 in damages for the cost of handling, cleanup and repair of the gallery wall.
But the museum’s director, Hans-Peter Wipplinger, told DailyExpertNews that the Leopold will continue to bear the financial fallout from the November 2022 climate protest. The museum has had to add two additional staff members to the entrance, increasing operating costs by about $32,800, while the price of further glass protections is about $11,000. Wipplinger also said insurance costs have “risen significantly” on major paintings that draw crowds.
Cultural institutions try to be proactive when their budget allows. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, more security has been added to certain exhibits, including the current blockbuster “Van Gogh’s Cypresses.” Lisa Pilosi, head of object preservation at the Met, said in an interview that every piece of art — more than 40 paintings and prints — is behind protective glass due to concerns about climate activists. (Last year, protesters threw soup at a Van Gogh painting in London’s National Gallery.)
“We used very high-quality plexiglass because we didn’t want to deal with attacks,” she explains. “But the glass is there to prevent people from touching the works, not to prevent the liquids from dripping down.”
To restore a painting to its former glory after an attack can take hours of painstaking conservation work, and expensive glass cannot completely prevent liquid from seeping through its protective barrier.
“We knew something like this could happen,” says Per Hedström, interim director of the National Museum in Sweden. “We started working out a plan last fall.”
Hedström said his museum is still calculating the damages the government could claim in prosecuting the activists, who belong to the environmental organization Aterställ Vatmarker (Restore Wetlands).
The number of workers it takes to clean a painting like the Monet “is actually quite large,” Hedström said. “We had about 10 or 15 people working for a few days: curators, press officers, curators.”
But there are limited options for a state museum like his to avoid an attack. “An extreme consequence would be to close the museum,” Hedström said, although that was unrealistic, he admitted, since the collection is owned by the Swedish public. “Activists use the principles of an open society as a vulnerability.”
In what appears to be a tipping point in the United States, prosecutors have filed serious federal charges against protesters who threatened the safety of art at Washington’s National Gallery of Art, a federal institution. Last month, Joanna Smith and Tim Martin, both 53, were charged with conspiracy to commit a felony against the US and damage an exhibit at the National Gallery after they smeared paint on the casing surrounding the fragile beeswax statue in April. Little Dancer”. Each charge carries a maximum legal penalty of five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.
Climate activists called the punishment “undeservedly harsh”. “It wasn’t a call for anyone to destroy museums,” Smith said in a phone interview, adding that she thought the charges would suppress free speech. “It was a call to people to look deeply and think about what they cherish on Earth and what they can do to protect those things.”
Kaywin Feldman, the director of the National Gallery, said she appreciated the authorities’ work “to bring these serious charges.”
After the attack, nearly two dozen employees worked to clean the gallery, examine the statue and repair the display case, which Feldman said sustained about $2,400 worth of damage. The Degas artwork was removed from the galleries for a total of 13 days. Feldman said restorers were less concerned about the paint spatter and more about the heavy vibrations caused by the commotion. The sculpture’s delicate wax body can develop cracks from such movements, which is why the museum rarely moves the artwork and never lends it. The last time the statue was moved was in 2020 for an exhibition.
“People keep saying to me, what the hell does ‘Little Dancer’ by Degas have to do with climate change? Of course the answer is nothing,” Feldman said. “Museums have always been committed to providing the widest possible access to original works of art and it has been part of their founding ethos. It bothers us all that we have to put up more and more barriers.”
