Three activists from “Just Stop Oil” again doused two paintings of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” with soup at the National Gallery in London on Friday, shortly after the sentencing of two activists from this environmental group to prison for offenses similar.
Shortly after 2:30 p.m. (9:30 a.m. in Quebec), they opened containers of soup and threw it on two of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” — one from 1888, already targeted at the National Gallery last year. previous time, and the other from 1889, on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They then unveiled their “Just Stop Oil” t-shirts, we can see in a video posted on social networks.
These works, immediately examined by a curator, are not “damaged”, specified the National Gallery in a press release sent to AFP, adding that three people had been arrested by the police.
Distrust after prison sentences
This action was organized as a “sign of defiance” after the sentencing of Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, to two years and 20 months in prison respectively by British justice on Friday morning, explains Just Stop Oil.
On October 14, 2022, these two activists doused the 1888 painting “Sunflowers” with soup before sticking their hands on the wall of the museum, a spectacular and highly publicized action to demand an immediate halt to any new oil or gas projects. in the United Kingdom.
She had only very slightly damaged the frame surrounding the 1888 work, protected by glass.
“People are being imprisoned for demanding that oil or gas projects be stopped. […] Future generations will be able to recognize that these prisoners of conscience were on the right side of history,” said activist Phil Green, 24, after throwing the soup on these works on Friday.
The group is calling for an end to fossil fuels by 2030 in the UK.
Since mid-September, the National Gallery has been organizing an exhibition dedicated to the famous Dutch painter, “Van Gogh: Poets and Lovers”, which closed its doors after the action.
The two activists sentenced on Friday by Southwark court in London should “serve at least half of their sentence in detention”, underlined Just Stop Oil, of which “25 sympathizers are currently in prison”.
“Disproportionate sentence”
“You had no right to do what you did to the “Sunflowers”,” said Judge Christopher Hehri on Friday, who sentenced Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland for “criminal damage”.
“The soup could have seeped through the glass” and damaged, “even destroyed”, the famous painting exhibited in the Trafalgar Square gallery, “a cultural treasure”, he added during the hearing.
Shortly before her sentence was announced, Anna Holland said she did not expect “justice from a broken system, which has been corrupted by its dependence on fossil fuels”. “Prison sentences, no matter how long, will not deter us,” she added.
“With these activist actions, I have chosen to peacefully disrupt an unjust, dishonest and deadly system,” said Phoebe Plummer.
The NGO Greenpeace denounced a “disproportionate penalty for a demonstration which caused minor damage to the frame of the painting and none to the canvas itself”.
“This is another sinister step in the repression of peaceful protests” started by the previous Conservative government, said Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK.
In July, several British NGOs and activists denounced a decline in the freedom to demonstrate after the heavy prison sentences imposed on five members of Just Stop Oil for organizing the blockade of an English motorway.
Four of them were sentenced to four years in prison by the same judge, Christopher Hehri, and the founder of the organization Roger Hallam was sentenced to five years for having prepared this action.