WASHINGTON : The latest in a series of protests against artworks in Europe, climate activists glued their hands to the frames of two famous works by Spanish painter Francisco de Goya in Madrid’s Prado Museum on Saturday.
New York reported, video evidence revealed that a man and a woman attached themselves to Goya’s “La Maja Vestida” (The Clothed Maja) and “La Maja Desnuda” (The Naked Maja), respectively, and wrote “+1.5 C” on the wall in between the two paintings.
Campaign group Futuro Vegetal said its members carried out the protest. A video posted to the Twitter account of the campaign group Futuro Vegetal showed a docent asking visitors not to take pictures of the scene.
ÚLTIMA HORA
Nos pegamos a “Las Majas” de Goya en el Museo Del Prado.
La semana pasada la ONU reconocía la imposibilidad de mantenernos por debajo del límite de aumento del Acuerdo de París de 1.5° de temperatura media respecto a los niveles preindustriales. pic.twitter.com/0buAMbeziJ
— FuturoVegetal (@FuturoVegetal) November 5, 2022
“Last week the UN recognized the impossibility of keeping us below the limit of 1.5 Celsius set in the 2016 Paris climate agreement. We need change now,” it wrote on Twitter.
In the weeks leading up to the COP27 climate change summit in Egypt, groups of climate activists have staged a number of related protests.
Earlier, Italian Climate activists threw pea soup over Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘The Sower’ painting at the Kroeller-Mueller museum in the Netherlands while others attempted to glue themselves to the glass covering Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” in The Hague.
According to the New York Post, four women who belonged to the environmental group Ultima Generazione Last Generation directed the stunt and shouted slogans against global warming and fossil fuels.
“These issues should be on the front pages of the news channels and political agendas every minute, but are instead only addressed with ‘scandalous’ actions like the one this morning,” the group said in a statement, the New York Post reported.
Previously, in London, environmental protesters from the group Just Stop Oil threw tomato soup on Van Gogh’s ‘The Sunflowers’ painting at London’s National Gallery.
According to New York Post, Prado stated that the wall graffiti was immediately covered up and that the paintings, which were made at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, had not been harmed.
“We condemn the use of the museum as a place to make a political protest of any kind,” the gallery added, New York Post reported.
According to New York Post, Police said two people had been arrested. (ANI)