Climate activists took action on Thursday against a famous sculpture by Degas in a large museum in Washington, the work being protected by a plexiglass cage which they smeared with paint.
The French artist’s original wax sculpture of ‘La petite danseuse de quatorze ans’ was ‘attacked by protesters with stripes of red and black paint’, the National Gallery of Art, one of the major United States museums. This is one of the first actions of this type in North America.
The institution specified, in a press release sent to theFrance Media Agencythat 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) was participating 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 seated 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.
“Today, through nonviolent rebellion, we have temporarily defiled a work of art to evoke the very real children whose suffering is certain if the deadly fossil fuel companies continue to extract coal, soil oil and gas,” the group claiming the action, Declare emergency, wrote on Instagram.
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 Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” in London and smeared mashed potatoes on a masterpiece by Claude Monet in Potsdam, near Berlin.