The dousing of a glass-covered Mona Lisa in pumpkin soup is the latest in a series of incidents in which environmental activists have targeted expensive artworks. Here are some of the other incidents that have made headlines during the last two years:
In October 2022, two Just Stop Oil activists emptied cans of tomato soup over the glass shielding Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery. The couple, who claimed that art lovers were more concerned with paintings than the environment, were arrested and charged with destroying the frame. A month later, activists from the Last Generation group poured pea soup on another Van Gogh painting, “The Sower” in Rome. The painting, which was displayed behind glass, was likewise undamaged.
Mash for Monet
In October 2022, protesters from Last Generation’s German branch threw mash at Claude Monet’s “Les Meules” (The Haystacks), which was on display in a Potsdam museum. It, too, was encased by glass. In a Swedish museum in June 2023, activists splashed red paint and bonded their hands to the glass covering another of the French impressionist’s paintings, “The Artist’s Garden at Giverny”.
Glued to Vermeer
In October 2022, a man in the Dutch city of The Hague glued his head to the glass protecting Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl With a Pearl Earring” in the Mauritshuis museum. A second activist poured tomato soup on it.
Hands-on with Goya
In November 2022, two Extinction Rebellion activists bonded their hands to the frames of two artworks by Spanish painter Francisco Goya in Madrid’s Prado Museum. The demonstration did not harm either painting.
Painting Degas
In April 2023, climate activists attacked a famous Degas wax sculpture — “La petite danseuse de quatorze ans” (Little Dancer, 14 years old) — in a Washington museum, smearing its Plexiglas enclosure with red and black paint. “Today, through nonviolent rebellion, we temporarily defiled a work of art to evoke the very real children whose suffering is certain if deadly fossil fuel companies continue to mine coal, oil and gas from the soil”, the group which claimed the action, which called itself Declare Emergency, wrote on Instagram.
Taking a hammer to Velasquez
Just Stop Oil protesters shattered the glass cover of Diego Velazquez’s “The Rokeby Venus” at the National Gallery in London with hammers in November 2023. They claimed to have been inspired by the work of a suffragette who slashed the artwork in the early twentieth century while campaigning for the right to vote.