Environmental activists daub the window of a Degas sculpture in Washington

This is a first in the United States: environmentalists from the Declare Emergency movement carried out a punch action against Edgar Degas' La Petite Danseuse de quatorze ans at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on Thursday. The museum has indicated that, at first sight, no damage is to be deplored on the work. This was protected by a Plexiglas window that they smeared with paint.

The original wax sculpture "was attacked by protesters with stripes of red and black paint," said the National Gallery of Art, one of the major museums in the United States. The institution clarified, in a press release sent on Twitter, that the work “of inestimable value” was removed from the exhibition halls to “assess possible damage” that it would have suffered. “We categorically denounce this physical attack against one of our works of art,” reacted the museum in its press release, specifying that the American federal police (FBI) was participating in the investigation.

"We need our leaders to take serious action to tell the truth about what is happening to the climate," said an activist, in her 50s, seated at the foot of the small statue, her hands smeared with the red paint used on the glass and the base of the work of Edgar Degas, in a video published by the Washington Post.

“Today, through non-violent rebellion, we defiled a work of art to evoke the very real suffering of children if the deadly fossil fuel companies continue to extract coal, oil and gas soils,” wrote on Instagram Declare Emergency, the group claiming the action. “This little dancer is protected in her climate-controlled box, but people, animals and ecosystems are not,” explains the movement in the same publication.

As its name suggests, the environmental movement is calling on US President Joe Biden to declare a state of climate emergency. The group, unknown to the general public until now, said that one of its activists was released by the authorities shortly afterwards. In the fall of 2022, mainly in Europe, activists defending the environmental cause multiplied actions targeting works of art to alert public opinion to global warming. In European museums, for example, they stuck their hands on a Goya painting in Madrid, squirted tomato soup on Van Gogh's Sunflowers in London and smeared mashed potatoes on a masterpiece. work of Claude Monet in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Like the French Last Renovation, the British Just Stop Oil, Futuro Vegetal in Spain, or Letzte Generation in Germany, Declare Emergency is a member of the international network A22, a collective engaged in a race to save humanity. These groups of activists do not want to "raise awareness, beg or entertain (...) but force the change required for this world to happen". Even if it means using all means, even illegal ones.