In yet another attack on famous paintings in European museums, the famed painting ‘The Scream’ – a creation of 19th-century Norwegian artist Edvard Munch – was targeted by climate activists at Norway’s national museum on Friday.
Norwegian police said two people tried in vain to glue themselves to Edvard Munch’s 1893 masterpiece at an Oslo museum and no harm was reported to the painting of a waif-like figure appearing to scream, reported news agency AP.
The police officials were informed by the Oslo museum after which three people were taken under their “control.” The third person was reportedly filming the other two during the incident. The report added that the museum said the room containing the 1893 artwork “was emptied of the public and temporarily closed,” and will reopen when the situation approves even as the rest of the museum remains open.
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An organisation named Stopp Oljeletinga, which means Norwegian for ‘stop oil exploration’, claimed responsibility for the act and was quoted by AP as saying “we wanted to pressure lawmakers into stopping oil exploration”.
An unverified account of the same name on Twitter and a website associated with the organisation demands an “immediate halt to all further exploration for oil on the Norwegian continental shelf while ensuring adjustment for today’s oil workers”. The European country is among the top producers of offshore oil and gas.
On Wednesday, another group – ‘Stop Fossil Fuel Subsidies’ in Australia targeted Andy Warhol’s artwork ‘Campbell’s soup cans’ in Canberra and said in a Twitter post that their act “highlighted ‘the danger of capitalism.” With this, the increased instances of activists using art disruption tactics to draw attention to the climate crisis remains a matter of debate as some are of the view that such acts hurt the climate movement more than they help.
