Earlier this month, climate activists staged a rally at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where they protested the indictment of colleagues who had splashed paint on the glass case enclosing an Edgar Degas sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
On June 24, 20 activists from the Extinction Rebellion and Rise & Resist groups gathered around Degas’s sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen at the Met. Their hands were smeared with red paint, and the activists brought signs that read, “No art on a dead planet.”
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The protest came roughly a month after Joanna Smith and Tim Martin, two members of the Declare Emergency climate group, were charged with “conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States.”
Smith and Martin smeared paint onto the protective case of the Degas sculpture at the National Gallery of Art. “This art is beautiful, and we’re damaging it with climate change. We need our leaders to take urgent action and tell us the truth about the climate crisis,” Smith tells a crowd in video footage from the demonstrations.
Extinction Rebellion and Rise & Resist described the charges against her and Martin as “unjustifiably harsh” and part of “a troubling pattern of repression observed in the treatment of climate activists by law enforcement,” per a statement emailed to press.
“If our government still possesses any remnants of democracy, it must not permit climate criminals to elude accountability, while simultaneously punishing citizens who dare to challenge their wrongdoing—citizens who themselves are victims of the actions of these climate criminals,” Georgia B. Smith, an artist and activist with Extinction Rebellion, said in the statement.
There was no direct damage to the National Gallery of Art’s Degas, however the museum has—according to Extinction Rebellion—estimated the total damage to the installation as $2,400, a number which the activists say is inflated.
Martin and Smith face fines of up to $250,000 each and up to five years in prison.
“If Joanna and Tim had been graffiti artists using fingerpaint to tag plexiglass, they wouldn’t be facing the prospect of lengthy prison sentences. Their indictment is not based on their actions, but on their motivations. It is an indictment of intimidation, rather than a pursuit of justice,” Stu Waldman, an organizer with Rise & Resist, said in a statement.