Climate activists throw mashed potato on a Monet painting, before glueing themselves to the floor at the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, Germany. Video / Letzte Generation via Twitter
Climate protesters threw mashed potato at a Monet in a German museum to protest fossil fuel extraction on Sunday, but caused no damage to the artwork.
Two activists from the group Last Generation, which has called on the German government to take drastic action to protect the climate and stopusing fossil fuels, approached Monet’s Les Meules at Potsdam’s Barberini Museum and threw a thick substance over the painting and its gold frame.
The group later confirmed via a post on Twitter that the mixture was mashed potato. The two activists, both wearing orange high-visibility vests, also glued themselves to the wall below the painting.
“If it takes a painting – with #MashedPotatoes or #TomatoSoup thrown at it – to make society remember that the fossil fuel course is killing us all: Then we’ll give you #MashedPotatoes on a painting!” the group wrote on Twitter, along with a video of the incident.
In total, four people were involved in the incident, according to German news agency dpa.
The Barberini Museum said later Sunday that because the painting was enclosed in glass, the mashed potato didn’t cause any damage. The painting, part of Monet’s Haystacks series, is expected to be back on display on Wednesday.
“While I understand the activists’ urgent concern in the face of the climate catastrophe, I am shocked by the means with which they are trying to lend weight to their demands,” museum director Ortrud Westheider said in a statement.
Police told dpa they had responded to the incident, but further information about arrests or charges was not immediately available.
The Monet painting is the latest artwork in a museum to be targeted by climate activists to draw attention to global warming.
The British group Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup at van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery earlier this month.
Just Stop Oil activists also glued themselves to the frame of an early copy of da Vinci’s The Last Supper at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to Constable’s The Hay Wain in the National Gallery.
