Climate Activists Strike Again

Mashed potatoes thrown at $100 million Monet painting at Museum Barberini

Protestors+glued+themselves+underneath+the+defaced+painting

Letze Generation

Protestors glued themselves underneath the defaced painting

by Isabel Andjell, Staff Writer

Throwing food at million-dollar valued paintings seems to be the newest tactic climate activists are using to draw attention to their cause. Attacks in the U.K., Italy, and Germany’s latest target – Claude Monet’s, “Les Meules” – have garnered widespread online attention.

During the stunt, the activists from Germany’s Letze Generation (Last Generation) questioned onlookers, “Does it take mashed potatoes on a painting to make you listen? This painting is not going to be worth anything if we have to fight over food. When will you finally start to listen?”

This same climate advocacy group also staged a hunger strike in Berlin last year to protest a lack of action from politicians over climate change. This specific protest, though, protested the production of fossil fuels, much like the one that took place in London’s National Gallery on the 9th of October. The two protestors were arrested at the scene for property damage and trespassing; though the museum said that the painting had not suffered any damage in a Twitter statement.

As predicted, this sort of attention-grabbing protest has been on a steady rise. It is likely that the world will not see an end to them in the near time.