Two climate activists threw mashed potatoes as a protest on a painting worth $110m by famed artist Claude Monet. The activist pair from Letzte Generation has been arrested by police and are now investigated by the German museum authorities.
German Climate Activists Throw Mashed Potatoes Over Famous $110m Monet Painting
By
Zainab Pervez in
News
On 24th October 2022
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Two protesters in Germany joined a wave of demonstrators around the world calling attention to climate change by defacing famous artwork. The climate activist pair threw mashed potatoes on a glass-covered painting by famed artist Claude Monet hanging in a German museum.
The activists belonged to an environmentalist group called 'Letzte Generation' which is German for Last Generation. They threw mashed potatoes on Monet’s 1890 painting “Meules”, worth $110m at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany.
“People are starving, people are freezing, people are dying. We are in a climate catastrophe,” protester Mirjam Herrmann yelled after sealing her hand to the wall.
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“Science tells us we won’t be able to feed our families by 2050. Does it take mashed potatoes on a painting to make you listen?”
This painting will be worth nothing if we have to fight over food,”Hermann told onlookers.
A police spokesperson told German news agency dpa that two of the protesters had been arrested and were under investigation for potential trespassing and property damage.
Museum Barberini said that an immediate assessment showed that the artwork was "not damaged in any way" since it had a protective glaze. The painting will be on display again from Wednesday, it added in a tweet.
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Dating from 1890, Monet's "Les Meules" was acquired by German billionaire Hasso Plattner for $110.7 million at a 2019 auction, according to ARTnews. The painting is on permanent loan from his foundation, the museum said.
“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.
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The incident followed a similar protest at London's National Gallery, where two protesters from the U.K. group 'Just Stop Oil' threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh's painting “Sunflowers,” worth $85m, to protest the country's cost-of-living crisis. That painting was also behind protective glass and unharmed, according to the museum.
