Are Climate Activists Art Attacks Helping or Hurting Their Cause
b"On October 14, two activists,\\xa0Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland, walked into the National Gallery\\xa0in London and threw a can of tomato soup on Van Gogh\\u2019s Sunflowers while wearing shirts that read JUST STOP OIL. The action was part of a larger cycle of disruptive occupations and direct action by environmentalists in the UK, demanding dramatic action to cut fossil fuels in the face of climate change\\u2014but the Van Gogh soup attack by far drew the most media attention. Indeed, the tactic of using attacks on artworks to get their message out has caught on with campaigners this year, with environmentalists in at least half a dozen countries making headlines with spectacular actions in museums\\u2014gluing themselves to famous pieces, spray-painting the walls around them, or throwing food at artworks.\\nThese actions have, in turn, touched off a fierce debate among observers and activists alike about the art-attack tactic. Is it the kind of desperate move needed to shock the public into action when nothing else seems to work? Or do the actions repel otherwise sympathetic observers, isolating a movement that needs to scale up dramatically?\\nLondon-based art journalist Farah Nayeri is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and the author of the recent book Takedown: Art and Power in the Digital Age, which looks at how the digitally empowered activism of the last ten years has changed what the public expects from a museum. In an essay for Artnet News responding to these new museum actions, she wrote about the long history of vandalizing art for a cause, from suffragette Mary Richardson slashing Velazquez\\u2019s Rokeby Venus more than a century ago, to protests within British museums against oil giant BP\\u2019s sponsorship over the last decade.\\nThis week, Artnet News's national art critic Ben Davis spoke to Nayeri about this history, and what the stakes of the new protests truly are."