Now that the use of iconic paintings as flash grenades for climate protest messaging has, for the moment, subsided, I want to think through it with a little more clarity.
As the International Council of Museums (ICOM) says (and I paraphrase), the attacks on art and cultural heritage in the name of climate activism show the immense value of these objects to the world. The attacks finally attracted the attention of the public outside of the cultural heritage community. How many of you heard of #JustStopOil before these attacks?
Any insurer will tell you that most damage to cultural heritage objects occurs in transit, yet we continue to ship them to museums around the world at great risk because we feel a duty to education and accessibility (politics and PR play a role as well). So, how concerned should we be about art as the subject of these relatively rare protests? Are they, in fact, a continuation of the mission of our institutions?
At the end of the day, when do prioritize the bigger picture over the immediate concerns over the object? What if these pieces are doing what they are supposed to be doing: culture as an harbinger of societal change.
By reproducing this video and related videos, we do exactly what the activists want: publicize their message.
Today, of course, it’s impossible to miss how the earlier boundary between activism and art has blurred. While earlier artists took their skills and energies into, say, political activism or direct social action, or protested against the privileged and exclusionary nature of the gallery and museum, now those distinctions – between aesthetic and political worlds – have become porous.
This quote from the ArtReview review of the history of art as activism highlights the evolution of the practice and
Louisa Buck on the the Week in Art offers a more sympathetic view to the cause.
I take great care to take an objective view to the situation and see complexity. In fact, we should acknowledge how in most of these protests, those involved knew exactly what they were doing and made efforts to not damage works or involved only glazed works.
More interestingly to me, by using iconic pieces in the protests, they placed the greater, possibly non-museum-going public in a position to realize that they value these objects.
Of course, I do not want to suggest that we should promote the use of cultural patrimony in protest at great risk to their well being. I only suggest we revel in the nuance and seek greater understanding on a case-by-case basis (and make sure your insurance policy covers this type of damage). That said, if we believe what former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Thomas Hoving, claimed in his 1997 book False Impressions: The Hunt for Big-Time Art Fakes that over 40 percent of works in museums are fakes, then there is a nearly 1 in 2 chance that it is not real anyway.
