The United Kingdom has entered a delicate period of protests and street confrontations, and the direct victim of this tension is a masterpiece by Baroque painter Diego Velázquez. Two members of the environmental movement Just Stop Oil, an organization that campaigns against the use of fossil fuels, used hammer blows to break the glass protecting the painting “Venus in the Mirror” on display at the National Gallery in London this Monday morning . The art gallery analyzes the status of the work.
On the same Monday, it was leaked to some media that the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak, whose government program for this election year will be announced in Parliament this Tuesday through the King’s Speech, has decided to grant new hydrocarbon exploration and drilling licenses in the North Sea. Environmental groups have stepped up their confrontation with Downing Street following last month’s decision to postpone several government commitments on climate change.
At the same time as the London art gallery vandalism occurred, dozens of activists from the same organization came forward, Just stop the oil, were arrested nearby on Whitehall Avenue. They protested with a slow march that blocked traffic on the street where most ministries and government buildings are concentrated. Also in the middle of the route is the Cenotaph commemorating those who died in the United Kingdom’s wars.
The activists, ages 20 and 22, who entered the museum carried out the action wearing T-shirts from their organization, which calls for a halt to new oil and gas projects to stop climate change. “Politics are letting us down,” they justified the attack shortly before they waited on the ground to be arrested, “millions of people will die.”
The two young people have linked their action to another attack on the same work in 1914, when Canadian suffragette Mary Richardson, protesting the imprisonment of another feminist in the United Kingdom, struck the painting with an ax. “Women didn’t get the right to vote through the ballot box. Now is the time to walk the talk,” shouted one of the members of Just Stop Oil.
After the attack, National Gallery staff forced the rest of the visitors to leave the room containing the painting, painted around 1650 and considered the only surviving nude by the Spanish Baroque painter, and held the environmentalists until they arrived police and has begun the removal of the painting, which is currently being examined by the museum’s conservators.
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Last year, Just Stop Oil activists poured tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the same museum, an action that caused no damage to the work, which was also covered with safety glass. This protest was followed by other similar protests at various art galleries around the world, including the Prado Museum in Madrid, by members of Futuro Vegetal. Just Stop Oil typically targets drivers and blocks traffic.
Sunak’s government faces a week of tension on the streets. Next Saturday is Remembrance Day, the closest thing to a national holiday in the UK. Several ministers have called for London’s Metropolitan Police to ban the demonstration planned for that day in support of Palestine and against the bombing of Gaza. It would be the fourth weekend in a row of protests of this kind, with the number of participants increasing exponentially.
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