Two activists from the Spanish Vegetable Group glued this Saturday to the frames of the paintings ‘La Maja Desnuda’ and ‘La Maja Vestida’, by Francisco de Goya, exhibited at the Prado National Museum in Madrid, in a demonstration protesting the climate emergency.
Between the two cadres they wrote the message “+1.5º”, to “warn about the increase in global temperature that will cause an unstable climate and serious consequences throughout the planet”, quotes the EuropaPress agency.
This protest is added to others that have taken place in recent weeks, in some museum institutions in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, having arrived in Spain for the first time, according to published news.
At the beginning of the week, this type of action gave rise to the issuance of a circular from the Spanish Ministry of Culture, recommending greater vigilance in museums and greater attention to their visitors.
In Portugal, museum directors contacted by the Lusa agency are concerned about recent cases of environmental actions considered “atrocious” and “terrorist” against works of art, and have intensified surveillance of the cultural heritage in their custody.
At stake is “the very democratic character” of museums, which brought art to the public space, after the French Revolution, and turned it into “collective property of citizens”, as they underline, in a work released today by the Lusa agency .
Since July this year, several environmental groups have chosen museums in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands as the scene of their protests, in particular the British group ‘Just Stop Oil’, created by members of ‘Extinction Rebellion’, and the German ‘Letzte Generation’. ‘.
The chosen targets were, for example, the painting “Sunflowers”, by the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), exhibited at the National Gallery in London, into which tomato soup was thrown, which was slightly damaged, and a painting by the French painter Claude Monet (1840-1926), from the series ‘Les Meules’, on display in the Barberini Museum in Potsdam, Berlin, the target of mashed potatoes.
This last work was not damaged, since it was protected by glass, according to the museum.
For directors of Portuguese museums, Lusa contacts, such as the Museu Nacional dos Coches and the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, in Lisbon, which guard, restore and exhibit unique collections in the world, these cases are “worrying” for these cultural spaces. , because “they put at risk a heritage that belongs to everyone” and “must be protected for current and future generations”.
The director of the National Museum of Carriages, Mário Antas, one of the most visited museums in the country, was “obviously concerned about a phenomenon that spreads mainly in the European reality”, and whose link with art generates many doubts.
“The right to protest is not at stake, but the ‘modus operandi’ towards works of art, which, after all, are a heritage of humanity to be enjoyed by all,” he told Lusa.
The director of the National Carriage Museum says he has “some difficulty understanding what museums and works of art have to do with this type” of environmental protest. “It is related to the issue of oil and pollution, but the works of art are not to blame. They are media actions, but it is difficult to understand why works of art have to pay for this”, he questioned.
Regarding security, “it is in accordance with the security guidelines of the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage [DGPC]”, body of the Ministry of Culture that supervises national museums, monuments, palaces and archaeological sites.
He also drew attention to the need for “heritage education” for society, in a “prophylactic and pedagogical way that can be done every day, starting in schools, with the awareness of the importance of the unique heritage existing in Portugal”.
The director of the National Museum of Ancient Art, Joaquim Caetano, shared the same fears.
“It is evident that the situation is worrying for all museums, and we are taking measures to try to ensure that nothing happens”, he said, in statements to Lusa, specifying that the reinforcement has been made “with surveillance companies, in principle, more prepared to respond to these cases”.
He also said that “it is precisely the DGPC that is controlling and taking these measures”, because “the concern is shared by the directors of museums and the tutelage”.
The art historian recalled that “one of the reasons why national museums were created after the French Revolution was precisely to respond to iconoclasm [movimento radical que se opunha ao culto das imagens e que chegava a destruí-las] revolutionary, which at the time achieved great importance above all because of the link between art and the wealth of the old regime and royal propaganda”.
The removal of these pieces from the royal and nobility spaces for the creation of the great national museums “was a response in the sense of removing the propaganda burden that a large part of the artistic heritage had, and transforming it into the collective property of the citizens.” “, he remembered.
“There was a decontextualization of the propagandistic character of art, and its transformation into an identity mechanism of the nascent democracy itself. It is in this sense that works of art are in museums. When this iconoclasm [agora] enters museums, it means that the very democratic character of these institutions is being questioned, and that seems to me to be a bit unreasonable as a ‘modus operandi'”, said Joaquim Caetano.
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Source: TSF
