Rima Abdul Malak does not want to see environmental activism taking place in museums. The Minister of Culture therefore called on French museums to “redouble their vigilance”, after works by Monet and Van Gogh were the target of environmental activists in Germany and England.
“It’s awful! How does the logic of climate defense lead to wanting to destroy a work of art? It’s absolutely absurd”, declared the Minister in an interview with the Parisian released Tuesday evening.
“Prepare” the surveillance agents
Believing that not all works can be protected by glass, and that France is not “safe one day from a frenzied activist attacking a painting that has none”, she “asked everyone the national museums to redouble their vigilance, to talk about it with the surveillance agents, to prepare them for all these eventualities”.
Sunday at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam (Germany), Millstones by Claude Monet were the target of two environmental activists who sprinkled the painting with mash, without damage because it was protected by glass. These activists thus intended to protest against the inaction in favor of the protection of the planet and the living. After their gesture, they took the same pose as the activists who had thrown tomato soup on October 14 on the Sunflowers by Van Gogh at the National Gallery in London, a painting also protected by glass.
At the end of May, Mona Lisa had been entarred in the Louvre Museum. A gesture without consequence since it too had been placed since 2005 behind armored glass. The author of this act had also mentioned the “planet”, before being placed in the psychiatric infirmary.
Asked this week, several major museums refused to provide details on the measures already implemented or to come to strengthen the security of works of art. The Center Pompidou nevertheless indicated that it had “taken into account these attacks, which have been increasing for some time” by a specific “exchange” “with its teams”.