2023-04-28 08:34:04
Two environmental activists painted the ice protecting “La Petite danseuse de quatorze ans”, a flagship work by Edgar Degas, in Washington. This type of shock action, rare in the United States, has multiplied in Europe in recent months.
Climate activists took action on Thursday against a famous sculpture by Edgar Degas in a large museum in Washington, the work being however protected by a plexiglass cage which they smeared with paint.
The original wax sculpture of The little fourteen-year-old dancer of the French artist “was attacked by demonstrators with strips of red and black paint”, declared the National Gallery of Art, one of the great museums of the United States. This is one of the first actions of this type in North America.
The institution specified, in a press release sent to AFP, that the work “of inestimable value” was removed from the exhibition halls to “assess possible damage” that it would have suffered.
“We categorically denounce this physical attack against one of our works of art,” reacted the museum in its press release, specifying that the American federal police (FBI) were taking part in the investigation.
“We need our leaders to take serious action to tell the truth about what is happening to the climate,” says an activist in her 50s sitting at the foot of the small statue, her hands covered in the red paint used on the glass and the base of the work of Edgar Degas, in a video published by the Washington Post.
State of emergency claimed
“Today, through nonviolent rebellion, we temporarily defiled a work of art to evoke the very real children whose suffering is certain if deadly fossil fuel companies continue to mine coal, oil and gas from the soil”, writes on Instagram the group which claims the action, Declare emergency. He calls on US President Joe Biden to declare a state of climate emergency.
The group, unknown to the general public until now, said that one of its activists was released by the authorities shortly afterwards.
In the fall of 2022, mainly in Europe, environmental activists multiplied actions targeting works of art to alert public opinion to global warming.
For example, they stuck their hands on a painting by Goya in Madrid, threw tomato soup on the Sunflowers of Van Gogh in London and smeared mashed potatoes on a masterpiece by Claude Monet in Potsdam, near Berlin.
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