Pratiksha Shome
At the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, two climate activists covered a Monet painting with crimson paint and taped their hands to the glass. The vibrant picture by the French Impressionist artist The Artist’s Garden at Giverny (1900), which has pink and purple irises, was smeared with paint by the two women, who were identified by name tags as Emma and Maj. The picture is on view at the National Museum as a part of the exhibition “The Garden – Six Centuries of Art and Nature” thanks to a loan from the Paris-based Musée d’Orsay, which bought it in 1983.
The two protesters were sporting T-shirts bearing the insignia of the environmental group Restore Wetlands, which posted a video of the demonstration on Twitter and Facebook. In an interview with the AFP, it also took blame for it and asserted that “gorgeous gardens like those in Monet’s painting will soon be a distant memory.” A spokesman for Terställ Vtmarker, Helen Wahlgren, told AFP that a climate disaster “is also a health crisis” and that “millions of people are already dying from the climate disaster.” She added that in order to uphold its international climate commitments, the Swedish government needs to do more. “We need to reduce our emissions by 31%. But the amount of our emissions keeps rising. It’s revolting.
The Artist’s Garden at Giverny was painted over by two individuals on June 14 about 2:30 pm (8:30 am Eastern), according to the museum’s press office. The painting, which is protected by glass, is currently being examined by museum conservators to check for damage, according to the press office’s statement to CNN. According to a press release from the Stockholm Region police, who said in a statement, “The crime is currently classified as aggravated vandalism,” police were notified and the two ladies were arrested. Although it is unknown if there were more than the two people arrested, many people have been questioned, and the police will examine the sequence of events using the security footage from the museum, among other things.
The police news release was also changed to reflect that the two women were accused with “suspicion of serious damage.” The incident at the National Museum in Stockholm comes after a flurry of anti-climate change demonstrations at galleries and museums in North America, Europe, and Canada. These demonstrations were all intended to draw attention to significant government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry as well as the growing effects of climate change on people all over the world.
The National Museum in Stockholm, however, told AFP that it was “naturally” against any acts that would endanger treasures of art. Per Hedstrom, the acting superintendent of the museum, stated that “cultural heritage has great symbolic value and it is unacceptable to attack or destroy it, regardless of the purpose.”
Source: ARTnews
