In French museums, a reflection is underway, in the greatest confidentiality, to strengthen the security of the works exhibited after the multiple actions of environmental activists in recent days.
The subject is “sensitive”. After the spectacular actions of environmental activists against The sunflowers of your Van Gogh Millstones by Claude Monet, the Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, called on French museums on Tuesday to “redouble their vigilance”. But the principals concerned are very reluctant to reveal how they intend to deal with possible happenings of activists.
“There is a reflection, because it is a risk for the works”, indicates a source at the Ministry of Culture to BFMTV.com. “Although many of them are protected, not all of them are.”
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”, the Minister of Culture “asked all national museums to be extra vigilant, to talk about it with the surveillance agents, to prepare them for all these eventualities”.
Too confidential information
“All museum officials have been taking precautions against vandalism for a very long time,” reacted Bernard Blistène, honorary president of the Center Pompidou in Paris, interviewed by AFP. “Should we take more? Probably.”
Questioned by BFMTV.com, the Louvre and Orsay museums, which house some of the most famous paintings in the world, refuse to comment and specify their strategy in the face of this new risk.
“It’s too confidential information” and which can have repercussions “on insurance”, specifies for its part the Louis Vuitton Foundation, which is currently exhibiting, alongside the works of Joan Mitchell, Claude Monet’s Water Lilies.
The Centre Pompidoujoined by AFP, nevertheless indicated that it had “taken into account these attacks, which have been increasing for some time” by a “specific” exchange “with its teams”.
On the side of the museum guards, silence is also required on possible new security measures. “It’s too sensitive”, we are told at the Unsa-Paris Musées union.
Reinforced controls at the Grévin museum
Actions aimed at works in the name of climate defense have multiplied in recent days. After The sunflowers by Van Gogh, targeted by a jet of tomato soup, last October 14 at the National Gallery in London (United Kingdom), these are Millstones by Claude Monet, which were sprinkled with mash on October 23 at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam (Germany), then The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, which was targeted on October 27 at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague (Netherlands).
“Does it take mashed potatoes on a board for you to listen to us?”, they launched.
On October 24, environmental activists from the same organization, Just Stop Oil, entarred the wax statue of King Charles III at Madame Tussauds in London, the equivalent of the Grévin museum. “We do not know how this ecological activism can manifest itself”, commented this Friday Yves Delhommeau, the director general of the Parisian museum, on BFMTV.
“We have an obligation to control (visitors) at the entrance since the Vigipirate plan is still in progress, and we search all the bags”, he recalled.
But this procedure has been “reinforced” for all visitors. “Before it was to check if there was not a knife or a weapon, but now we also check if we do not find a can of whipped cream or strange things.”
Heavy penalties possible in France
The Grévin museum had already been targeted in the past: in 2014, a Femen had “stabbed” the statue of Vladimir Putin, to cries of “Putin dictator”. More recently, at the end of June, Mona Lisa had been entarred in the Louvre Museum. A gesture without consequence since Mona Lisa, whose value is inestimable, has been behind armored glass since 2005. The author of this act had also mentioned the “planet”, before being admitted to the psychiatric infirmary of the prefecture from police.
In France, “the destruction, degradation or deterioration” of “cultural property which is in the movable public domain or which is exhibited, preserved or deposited, even temporarily, either in a museum in France, a library, a media library or an archive service, either in a place dependent on a public person or a private person carrying out a mission of general interest, or in a building assigned to worship” is punished by seven years in prison and 100,000 euro fine.
The penalty can even reach ten years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros “when committed by several people acting as perpetrators or accomplices”.
