After Goya, Van Gogh and Monet, it is Degas’s turn to find himself the target of climate activists. A punch action targeted, Thursday, April 27, a famous sculpture by the French artist exhibited in a large museum in Washington. The work was protected by a plexiglass cage.
The original wax sculpture of the 14-year-old La Petite Danseuse by the French artist “was attacked by protesters with strips of red and black paint,” said the National Gallery of Art, one of the major museums in the United States. UNITED STATES. This is one of the first actions of this type in North America.
The institution specified, in a statement sent to Agence France-Presse (AFP), that the work “of inestimable value” was removed from the exhibition halls to “evaluate possible damage” that she 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,” said 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 the foundation of Edgar Degas’ work, in a video published by the Washington Post.
That Biden declare a state of emergency on the climate
“Today, through nonviolent rebellion, we have temporarily defiled a work of art to evoke the very real children whose suffering is certain if deadly fossil fuel companies continue to extract coal, soil oil and gas,” the group claiming the action, Declare emergency, wrote on Instagram. He is asking that US President Joe Biden declare a state of climate emergency.
This 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 Goya painting in Madrid, squirted tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London and smeared mashed potatoes on a Claude Monet masterpiece in Potsdam, near Berlin.
