Two activists threw tomato soup at Van Gogh’s famous painting “Sunflowers” at London’s National Gallery. On Friday morning at around eleven o’clock, the two young women wearing T-shirts from the “Just Stop Oil” initiative tipped two cans of soup over the picture. They then glued their hands to the wall of the hall below the picture. The picture, which is said to have an estimated value of 84 million euros, was not damaged in the attack and is protected by a pane of glass. Only the frame got a few stains, which could be easily removed, according to the museum. Both were taken away by the police.
Just Stop Oil activists are calling for an end to oil and gas production. Before the two women were arrested at the National Gallery, one of them declaimed: “Which is worth more, art or life? Is art worth more than food than justice? Do you care more about protecting a painting or about protecting it our planet and people?”
Just Stop Oil activists have worked in several British museums
In recent months, museums around the world have become the scene of climate protests. The activists almost always stick to famous works of art. Just Stop Oil activists have been active in several British museums, including the National Gallery, the Royal Academy and a museum in Glasgow. In Italy, members of the group “Ultima Generazione” have glued themselves to works in the Uffizi Gallery, the Museum del Novecento in Milan and the Vatican Museums. There was also such an action in Melbourne.
In August, representatives of the German “Last Generation” movement stuck to Lucas Cranach’s “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” in the Berlin Picture Gallery and to the “Sistine Madonna” in the Dresden Picture Gallery. According to a report in the British newspaper The Observer Just Stop Oil and Ultima Generazione are supported by the Climate Emergency Fund, founded in 2019 by three California philanthropists, including the daughter of Robert Kennedy and the granddaughter of oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty. The man who, in June at the Louvre in Paris, Cake on the “Mona Lisa” thrown and “Think of the earth!” apparently did not belong to either group. Even then, there was no material damage worth mentioning.