Climate activists attack a well-known painting and the museum director shows understanding

Hamburg's most famous painting, "The Wanderer in the Sea of ​​Fog" by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), is "a fantastic icon" for climate activism. That's how Alexander Klar, the director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, puts it - and he seems almost honored that, after numerous attacks on works of art at home and abroad, his museum has finally been hit.

At least viewers could have gotten this impression when Klar chatted about the latest attack by the last generation in his house in the "Hamburg Journal" on NDR television on Monday evening - so cheerful and so understanding "for the cause" that one or the other patron as well as Lenders may have caught their breath. The Senate responded promptly.

What happened? Two activists from the Last Generation climate group wanted to stick a modified picture they had brought with them over the safety glass-protected painting "Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer" in the Hamburger Kunsthalle on Sunday, the police said. It showed the wanderer in front of an apocalyptic instead of a foggy background.

But a security guard reacted immediately and stood protectively in front of the painting. According to the police, the two women then put their version of the picture they had brought with them on the floor and sprinkled it with ashes. According to the latest generation, the ash comes from Saxon Switzerland, where there were severe forest fires in 2022. The activists wanted to draw attention to the consequences of climate change. Caspar David Friedrich's painting shows the mountains of Saxon Switzerland as a landscape in the background. The police who were summoned gave the two women places to stay.

Kunsthallen director Klar had already publicly declared his “sympathy with the activists” in August of last year. When asked whether he had provoked the weekend's action with this statement, he replied in the "Hamburg Journal": "I thought that I might have banned it." And further: "The sympathy may be with the matter , more than with the activists, but I might share that with many other colleagues from other houses.”

The attempted encroachment on the painting went so "slightly" "perhaps because of our house's affection for the subject," emphasized Klar. After all, the Kunsthalle is "already doing a great deal for climate protection", the topic is "so present" in the house. Therefore, the director considered it a "bonus" that the last generation had announced their protest in advance and the staff could prepare accordingly.

The fact that, according to surveys, the majority of Germans condemns the protests of the last generation is also felt by the director of the Kunsthallen. But, Klar continues: "No picture has been damaged yet." Each of the art projects targeted so far would have continued to exist afterwards. "In the end, this campaign is great marketing for a cause that concerns us all," said the doctor of art history, who after working at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, at the Kunsthalle in Emden and Head of the Kunsthalle Hamburg at Museum Wiesbaden since 2019.

If you want to be relevant as a museum, you have to live with such actions and with the fact that you become a place of social debate, explained Klar. Museums are public places where socially important issues have to be negotiated. And climate activism is currently the most burning issue, which is why it is almost logical that the protest took place in front of this picture. "The 'Wanderer' is a symbolic image for the climate crisis. This is the person who stands symbolically in front of the fog that we all face: What will the future bring?” says Klar, who is therefore “very happy” that the picture “survived”.

"The Wanderer Above the Sea of ​​Fog" was shown for the last time in Hamburg last Sunday and is to be exhibited in Schweinfurt from April 2nd. The picture was created around 1817 and is one of the most famous works by Caspar David Friedrich. It has belonged to the Hamburger Kunsthalle since 1970. According to the house, restorers should examine the painting as a precaution in the coming days.

The director is not afraid that patrons and lenders will run away from the Kunsthalle out of concern for their paintings: "We take very good care of the works," said Klar. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how the red-green Senate will deal with the director's statements. Because Klar did not comment on the action of the last generation as a private person, but as director of the Kunsthalle - a museum that acts as a foundation under public law, whose supervisory authority is in turn the cultural authority. This means that the Kunsthalle is one of the state-sponsored museums in Hamburg.

When asked by WELT, Culture Senator Carsten Brosda (SPD) said on Tuesday: "I have now lost all understanding of such actions." The fight against man-made climate change is one of the central tasks of our time. But these continued attacks on the arts harmed the cause they supposedly championed. “They neither motivate action nor promote a discourse on the matter. Instead, they divert our attention away from the issue and destroy necessary alliances.”

And referring directly to director Klar, Brosda points out that museums are of course places of social debate: “But they are also places where we preserve valuable cultural heritage and make it accessible. We will make sure they stay that way.”

Only recently, the last generation announced that they wanted to ensure “maximum disruption of public order” in Hamburg if Mayor Peter Tschentscher (SPD) did not respond to their demands. The Senate rejected the threats. Tschentscher does not consider such an approach to be justifiable, it said from the town hall.