Climate protesters on Sunday threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a German museum to protest fossil fuel extraction, 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 stop using 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 potatoes.
Photo: AFP / handout / Last Generation
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, German news agency DPA reported.
The Barberini Museum later on Sunday said that because the painting was enclosed in glass, the mashed potatoes did not cause any damage.
The painting, part of Monet’s Haystacks series, is expected to be back on display tomorrow.
“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 that 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 Vincent 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 Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, and to John Constable’s The Hay Wain in the National Gallery.
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