Climate protesters hurled maple syrup at a painting by Emily Carr at Canada’s Vancouver Art Gallery

The frequent attacks on art by climate activists that made headlines over the past month tended to be concentrated in Western Europe. This can no longer be the case.

On Saturday afternoon, two women associated with the group Stop Fracking Around threw maple syrup at an Emily Carr painting at the Vancouver Art Gallery in Canada before taped themselves to the wall below. They were filmed by a third accomplice.

stumps and sky (1934), a landscape painting, was not permanently damaged by the action, the gallery confirmed. It said it was working with the police investigating the incident, but no arrests had been made.

The artwork was conceived as a lament about the commercial exploitation of old-growth forests and offers some resonance to contemporary environmental issues.

“The Vancouver Art Gallery condemns acts of vandalism of the works of cultural significance in our custody or in any museum,” the museum’s director, Anthony Kiendl, said in a statement.

The activist group is calling for an end to the Coastal GasLink pipeline currently under construction in British Columbia, which will pass through traditional and unceded lands of several First Nations, including the Wet’suwet’en Territory.

“I think any amount of publicity that we can get as an organization is worth it because the climate crisis is the most pressing crisis of our time,” said one of the protesters, Emily Kelsall CBC News.

The other protester who taped herself to the wall is 19-year-old Erin Fletcher. In a statement, she said: “If we exceed an increase in average global temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius, we are looking at death and hunger on an unprecedented scale due to inaction on climate change.”

“And the government, instead of acting responsibly, is building fossil fuel infrastructure. They are doing the exact opposite of what science and ethics require of us.”

In another recent climate action, two activists from the group Last Generation taped themselves to the base of a dinosaur skeleton at the Natural History Museum in Vienna. An earlier attempt to do so was intercepted in September.

The escalation in attacks was sparked by an incident in which climate activists linked themselves to Just Stop Oil spilled tomato soup over Van Goghs sunflowers at the National Gallery in London on October 14. Since then works by Monet, Vermeer, Goya, Botticelli and Raphael were also targetedand a Attempted attack on Munchs The Scream was defeated on Friday.

Museums are stepping up security to mitigate this growing threat to their collections. Several experts agreed Artnet News about what action can be taken, including bag searches and special training.

consequences Artnet News on Facebook:


Want to stay one step ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the latest news, insightful interviews and incisive critical statements that drive the conversation.