Two activists splashed soup on the armored glass protecting The Mona Lisa in Paris on Sunday morning, adding their action – which did not damage the masterpiece – to the list of operations carried out in recent years by environmental movements in museums.
• Read also: In London, environmentalists attack a painting by Velázquez
“The work did not suffer any damage,” the Louvre Museum told AFP, specifying that the Salle des Estates, where the painting is exhibited, had been reopened to visitors, after having been closed for about an hour. . The largest museum in the world plans to file a complaint on Monday.
“What is important? What’s more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food? Our agricultural system is sick. Our farmers are dying on the job. One in three French people do not eat all their meals every day,” declaimed the activists, standing on each side of the table, after throwing away the soup, noted an AFP journalist.
They were then arrested, AFP learned from a police source. According to the Louvre, they had hidden the pumpkin soup in a coffee thermos. Food is accepted at the entrance to the establishment.
The museum experimented with banning entry with food in the past, but decided against it, partly because it is possible to buy food inside.
“The Mona Lisa, like our heritage, belongs to future generations. No cause can justify him being targeted,” condemned the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, on X.
“I’m not sure The Mona Lisa is the biggest polluter in France. What does that mean?” for her part denounced Prisca Thévenot, government spokesperson, on the France 3 television channel.
The famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci, presented behind armored protective glass since 2005, has already been the victim of vandalism several times. In May 2022, for example, he was the target of a cream pie.
Series of militant operations
The action was this time claimed, in a press release sent to AFP, by a collective called “Riposte Alimentaire”, presenting itself as “a French civil resistance campaign which aims to bring about a radical change in society in terms of climate. and social”.
It “follows the Last Renovation campaign”, which has claimed several strong actions in recent months to demand “a thermal renovation plan for buildings that meets the urgency”.
The soup jet on The Mona Lisa is this time presented as “the kick-off [d’une] campaign of civil resistance, which carries a clear demand, beneficial to all: social security for sustainable food.
For several years, a series of militant operations has targeted works in museums around the world.
In October 2022, two young women wearing t-shirts printed with “Just Stop Oil” projected the contents of two cans of tomato soup onto Van Gogh’s masterpiece. Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London, before pressing himself against the wall shouting: “Which is worth more, art or life?”
This painting was also protected by glass.
In other museums, activists glued their hands to a Goya painting in Madrid, smearing red and black paint on the Plexiglas cage surrounding The little fourteen year old dancer by Degas in Washington or smeared mashed potatoes on a Claude Monet masterpiece in Potsdam, near Berlin.
More broadly, civil disobedience movements have also recently disrupted sporting events or blocked traffic in Western countries, to denounce the inaction of governments and the economic world.