This is one of the first actions of this type in North America. To make their demands heard, climate activists on Thursday (April 27th) carried out a punch action against a famous Degas sculpture in a major museum in Washington.
The French artist's original wax sculpture The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen "was attacked by protesters with strips of red and black paint," said the National Gallery of Art, one of the states' major museums. -United. But the work was still protected by a plexiglass cage, which they smeared with paint.
The institution specified, in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse, that the work, "of inestimable value", was removed from the exhibition halls to "evaluate possible damage" that it would have suffered. "We categorically denounce this physical attack on one of our works of art," the museum responded in its statement, adding that the US 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 sitting at the foot of the small statue, her hands covered in the red paint used on the glass and plinth. 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, oil and soil 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, so far unknown to the general public, 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. They have, for example, stuck their hands on a Goya painting in Madrid, squirted tomato soup on Van Gogh's Sunflowers in London, and smeared mashed potatoes on a Claude masterpiece. Monet in Potsdam, near Berlin.
