Two climate activists glued themselves to the supports of a dinosaur skeleton in Berlin’s natural history museum on Sunday. The women, aged 34 and 42, wore orange vests and displayed a banner that read: “What if the government can’t control it?”
The protest group Letzte Generation issued a statement: “Climate change that we cannot cope with threatens us just like the dinosaurs of the past. If we don’t want to be threatened with extinction, we must act now.”
In recent weeks, climate activists elsewhere in Europe have also asked for attention to be paid to the climate problem. On Thursday, a climate activist stuck to the Girl with a Pearl Earring, the famous painting by Johannes Vermeer, which was protected with glass. That work has been hanging in the Mauritshuis in The Hague since Friday afternoon, undamaged.
Mashed potatoes
In the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, Germany, a stone’s throw from Berlin, two activists from the Letzte Generation group threw mashed potatoes on Claude Monet’s painting Les Meules last weekend. The pair then glued themselves to the floor. “We are asking society the same question as 2 women with #Tomatensuppe last week in the National Gallery in London: which is worth more, art or life?” the group wrote on Twitter after the action.
That same weekend, activists from the Just Stop Oil group in London blocked the famous Abbey Road intersection, causing heavy traffic congestion. The activists did this by adopting the same pose as The Beatles on the famous cover of their 1969 album Abbey Road. Just Stop Oil caused a stir worldwide last week by smearing a painting by Vincent van Gogh with tomato soup.
soup
On Thursday, a young woman tried to throw soup at a painting in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, the museum confirmed on Sunday. Guards prevented this. The museum would not say which painting was targeted, but it is home to artworks by the likes of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet and Claude Monet.
In the western French town of Sainte-Soline, climate protests are entering their second day, after 61 police officers were injured in previous actions there on Saturday. The protesters object to the construction of a huge water reservoir in the Deux-Sèvres department for agriculture. On Sunday, about 2000 activists blocked several roads in the region, reports the Breton newspaper Le Télégramme.
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