On 14 October 2022, visitors to the National Gallery in London were stunned as two Just Stop Oil activists splashed tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers. “What is worth more, art or life?” asked one of them as she glued her hand to the wall. “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”
Nine days later, two activists from Last Generation repeated the gesture, this time throwing mashed potatoes at Claude Monet’s Les Meules (“Haystacks”) in the Museum Barberini in Potsdam. Both artworks were undamaged as they were covered by protective glass.
Since 2022, climate groups and activists have carried out dozens of non-violent but disruptive actions in museums in Europe, North America, and Australia to bring attention to the ecological crisis and to demand social and environmental justice. And even though these actions have managed to capture global headlines, reactions have been overwhelmingly negative, and authorities have come down hard.
Widespread backlash
Reading the comments on videos showing these disruptive actions, public reception appears to be generally negative. This is also evident in surveys. For instance, an Odoxa survey conducted in June 2023 found that almost 90 per cent of French people were against environmentalists “vandalising” art.1 At the same time, media coverage of the incidents, particularly in mainstream outlets, has been overwhelmingly condemnatory, with reports often focusing on criticising the activists’ tactics (sometimes stating that such actions are counterproductive) rather than concentrating on the urgency of the environmental crisis itself.
But the political crackdown has been even harsher, with authorities showing little tolerance for disruptive climate protests, whether in museums, at airports, outside mines, or even on the streets. From the UK, France, and Germany to the Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy, countries have enacted new anti-protest legislation or expanded existing laws to criminalise climate activism. Italian and German authorities have invoked anti-organised crime or anti-mafia legislation to curb protests and investigate groups like Last Generation, while the French government even attempted to dissolve Les Soulèvements de la Terre (The Earth Uprisings Collective) using laws drafted to tackle extremist groups, denouncing them as “ecoterrorists”. Moreover, courts have enforced increasingly severe penalties, including both jail terms and fines. Detentions have soared as a result.
Museums themselves have been critical of the disruptive protests, too. In a joint statement following a spate of disruptive incidents in 2022, 92 museum directors from major institutions around the world expressed shock, saying activists “severely underestimate the fragility” of artworks. This backlash has had a heavy toll on both climate activists and groups. Fines and costly legal proceedings have led to financial hardship for some activists. At the same time, strict bail conditions have meant that protesters often face curfews, electronic tagging, and prohibitions on demonstrating while awaiting their trials.
The mental impact has also been severe, with some activists experiencing constant anxiety and psychological exhaustion. In March 2025, Just Stop Oil said it would cease high-visibility protests after its members were handed down a series of prison sentences (although the group itself stated it was disbanding as its demand that the UK approve no new fossil fuel projects had been met). In France, Riposte Alimentaire (“Food Response”) made a similar announcement in October 2024. Why, then, did these individuals and groups go through so much trouble?
A primary goal behind acts of civil disobedience in museums is to generate widespread international media coverage and public awareness of the ecological collapse in an “overcrowded attention economy”2 that ignores more subtle protests. The choice of artworks and protest methods is also intended to hold symbolic value: canned soup and mashed potatoes highlighted increasing food insecurity, while Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper was targeted to bring attention to crop failure. Moreover, museums were specifically targeted due to their role and mission in public education, which the activists believed they were failing to fulfil in relation to the climate crisis.
Is collaboration possible?
That said, climate groups have almost exclusively targeted works guarded by protective material, or their surroundings, such as transparent barriers, pedestals, frames, etc. Moreover, activists have expressed an interest in collaborating with museums and joining forces in a shared commitment to ecological sustainability.3
Initiatives aimed at opening spaces for dialogue between museums and eco-activist collectives are isolated, but they exist. One notable example is the Baltimore Museum of Art’s efforts to establish a sustainability programme, informed by an advisory committee composed of artists, activists, and city officials. Tim Martin, an artist and activist who took part in the action targeting the display case protecting Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was invited to join the committee.
As the International Council of Museums has stated, art institutions can play a key role in initiating and supporting climate action. Working actively with both climate groups and individuals will undoubtedly help make that vision more feasible.
- Odoxa (2023). Baromètre sécurité des Français – Les Français et l’activisme écologique . 17 July 2023. Available at: <https://www.odoxa.fr/sondage/les-francais-sopposent-aux-methodes-daction-des-activistes-ecologistes>. ↩︎
- Alice Madeleine Hilder Jarvis (2025). “No Art on a Dead Planet: Political Iconoclasm as Climate Activism”. Journal of Applied Philosophy. 29 October 2025. Available at <https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.70055> ↩︎
- Anne Bessette (2025). On Art ‘Vandalism’ and Civil Resistance in Museums: Destruction, Degradation, Artistic and Political Interventions since 1970. London: Routledge. ↩︎
