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.
It’s not a productive discourse though. They draw the ire of everyone doing something so senseless, and that in turn causes damage to the progress of their cause because people don’t want to support them.
An anecdotal example is that I agree with some of their sentiments but I will never support them because they do stupid ineffectual nonsense like this. Take your protests to the places that control these issues. Not a fucking art gallery.
This the exact same sentiment as people had in segregated US had towards activists.
Bringing attention and drawing ire are both sides of the same coin. Your sentence points of the hypocrisy:
They have been doing that for decades. And it didn’t do anything, did it? The fact that you tell them to do this points out how ineffective it was because you didn’t even know they were.
This same rhetoric you’re saying existed during many protests, from the suffragettes to the civil rights, and it’s always the same response. “It’s ineffective.” “It’s bothering people.” “Do it elsewhere.” “You’re making the cause worse.” It gets pretty repetitive.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m absolutely all for bothering people because it’s needed for change. But there are more and less effective ways to do that. Trashing art thatcis unrelated really seems less effective. Effective to a point, but less effective overall. You mentioned there have been protests at the appropriate places, and I admit I only know a handful. Do you have examples where people have damaged say, a corrupt politicians car? Or perhaps blocked the street where a lobbyist lives? Or maybe thrown red paint or buckets of organ meat and offal on the steps of the supreme court and picketed about the damages they’ve caused to womens rights?
If they have been doing outlandish things to the politicians and places of government, then I’m sorry. I haven’t noticed and I will agree it’s come time to demonstrate elsewhere. I will add that if that’s truly the case, I wish they’d say so when doing these stunts.