Amid recent art attacks, should museums become high-security zones? How institutions are responding to climate change activists
- Recent climate protests from activists targeting famous artworks have museums rethinking their security, but few want to turn their galleries into bank vaults
- Many institutions have already ramped up protective measures, including more visitor checks at entrances and training security personnel on how to respond
The security guard at the Barberini art museum in Potsdam, Germany, is visibly at a loss as to how to react.
Striding to the Monet painting where two people wearing high visibility orange vests are clearly up to something, he seems unsure about how to stop them, shouting a helpless “Hello? Hello?”
One of them, possibly briefly taken off guard by the hesitant approach, then himself replies with “Hello”, before they splatter mashed potatoes across the painting from the French impressionist’s Haystacks series.
In the more than five years since the museum opened its doors just outside Berlin, the Barberini has made a name for itself as a temple of art, but had yet to make the national news.
That has now changed thanks to the action by the Last Generation activists earlier in October who, like other environmental groups, are currently attacking artworks all across Europe with different substances – often food – to draw attention to climate change issues and push for more decisive action.
Also earlier in October, Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer’s masterwork Girl with a Pearl Earring was targeted by climate change activists in a museum in the Netherlands.