Three individuals targeted National Gallery paintings an hour after Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland were jailed for similar attack in 2022
Climate activists have thrown tomato soup over two Sunflowers paintings by Vincent van Gogh, just an hour after two others were jailed for a similar protest action in 2022.
Three supporters of Just Stop Oil walked into the National Gallery in London, where an exhibition of Van Gogh’s collected works is on display, at 2.30pm on Friday afternoon, and threw Heinz soup over Sunflowers 1889 and Sunflowers 1888.
The latter was the same work targeted by Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland in 2022. That pair are now among 25 supporters of Just Stop Oil in jail for climate protests.
I see your point, I do. But I also see theirs. There will be no one around in the future to enjoy or make art if we continue fucking up the world with fossil fuels the way we are.
Maybe it’d be better to walk around posting little signs on the paintings descriptions with a catch phrase like “like art? Stop fossil fuels” then a little blurb about how there’ll be no art in the future if there is no future.
That’s probably how I’d handle it, maybe even try to work with the museum so the signs wouldnt get taken down. But, that doesn’t get media attention. It’d never end up in the news. Maybe after contacting 50 museums it’d get a small mention, but ultimately no one would care.
Our current news cycles don’t encourage people to act civilly when trying to be heard. So that’s why this sort of extreme behavior keeps happening. It’s a vicious feedback loop and just like climate change we don’t seem to be making any moves to stop it.