LONDON — Room 34 of the National Gallery in London was packed Monday afternoon with tourists studying the masterpieces of British art on the walls, including JMW Turner’s “The fighting temeraire‘, depicting a warship being towed to a wrecking yard, and George Stubbs’ ‘Whistle‘, a huge painting of a horse rearing up to the sky.
Then, suddenly, two visitors broke the reverent mood. At 2:15 PM, Eben Lazarus, 22, a music student, pulled three posters from a tube. Then, with the help of Hannah Hunt, 23, a psychology student, he taped them over John Constable’s “the harvestman”, a famous 19th-century painting, which changes the rural landscape into a landscape with airplanes, fire-ravaged trees and a rusty car.
The couple then took off their jackets and unveiled T-shirts with the slogan “Just Stop Oil,” taped themselves to the painting’s frame and shouted about the need for action on climate change. “Art is important,” Lazarus said, his voice echoing through the gallery. But it was “no more important than the lives of my siblings and any generation we condemn to an unlivable future.”
Nearby, a school group was halfway through discussing another painting. Clare MacDonnell, the teacher, seemed imperturbable. “Oh my, I think it’s a climate protest,” she said. “How exciting!”
Over the past four years, disruptive climate protesters have become an everyday phenomenon in Britain, after The Rise of Extinction Rebellion, an activist group that sees mass nonviolent protest as the most effective way to effect change. Some members are happy to be arrested and are using their processes to talk about climate issues.
In 2019, hundreds of supporters repeatedly occupied roads and bridges around the UK Parliament, effectively shutting down that part of the capital†
Last year, Insulate Britain, a related group, started occupy highwayswhile Just Stop Oil has this year blocked fuel depots and in the weekend ran onto the track during the British Grand Prixa major motorsport event.
The events of the past week suggest that protesters now see art as a useful prop, although it is far from the first time that museums here have faced political protests. In 1914, the suffragist Mary Richardson walked into the National Gallery with an ax hidden in her sleeve, then cut a Velázquez nude in protest at the imprisonment of Emmeline Pankhurst. In more recent years, the British Museum, the Science Museum and the Tate group of art museums have faced: theatrical protests denounce their acceptance of sponsorship from oil companies. (BP stopped sponsoring the Tate museums in 2016.) But attaching activists to artwork is a new tactic.
Sarah Pickard, a lecturer at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle in France who has studied Extinction Rebellion and its offshoots, said in a telephone interview that the museums were not so much an end in themselves as a means of getting publicity. The group’s “whole strategy” is to take action that grabs the attention of the news media, “then move on to the next thing that sparks,” she said.
During the events of the past week, just stop oil said: some of the paintings were chosen for specific reasons, such as their importance or because they highlighted issues related to climate change.
Pickard said the protesters may say they have reasons for targeting specific paintings, but she said their choices were largely “irrelevant” because “the whole point is to be disruptive” to spark a discussion. convey what they see as an existential crisis. Events in Britain had the potential to be copied elsewhere, Pickard added, as protesters in France had previously copied British actions.
In May at the Louvre in Paris, a man smeared what looked like cake over the glass protecting the Mona Lisa then shouted that he was acting against “people who were destroying the planet”.
Mel Carrington, a spokeswoman for Just Stop Oil, said in a telephone interview that attacking museums was a way of “putting psychological pressure on the government” through publicity. The Van Gogh protest had received global coverage, she said, while previous actions at oil terminals had not. Carrington said the protesters didn’t mind if people didn’t like their actions; they weren’t trying to win friends.
None of the paintings appear to be damaged. A spokeswoman for the National Gallery said in an emailed statement that Constable’s landscape had suffered “minor damage to the frame and there was also some disturbance to the surface of the varnish on the painting.” He can be seen again on Tuesday.
Simon Gillespie, a fine art restorer, said in a telephone interview that solvents could dissolve the glue protesters had used on the frames. “Thank God they didn’t choose to glue themselves to the oil paint film because that would be very difficult,” he added.
Putting pressure on the paintings to put up posters could also cause damage, he said, but the protesters appeared to have worked to limit the damage. “They’ve been respectful,” he said.
When Extinction Rebellion appeared in 2018, it won widespread sympathy in Britain, where environmental issues have long been high on the public agenda. Still, the group’s disruptive tactics have since become an annoyance to many. Recent surveys by the polling organization YouGovabout 15 percent of respondents said they supported the group, with 45 percent against.
Nadine Dorries, British Culture Secretary, wrote in a tweet this week that the painting protesters were “attention seekers” who “help nothing but their own selfish egos.”
The two National Gallery protesters were arrested Monday. The Metropolitan Police said in an email on Wednesday that they had been released on parole pending further investigation.
At the museum, nine visitors said in interviews on Monday after the protest that they did not support the target of paintings. Luciana Pezzotti, 65, a retired teacher from Italy, said she cared about climate change and supported protest, but “why bother the arts with that?”
But among the visiting crowds, at least one youth expressed support for it. Emma Baconnet, an art student from Lyon, France, said it was “very important” for climate protesters to be provocative in getting their message out. “Sometimes it’s a little too much,” she said. “But if we just talk, governments don’t listen.”