Climate activists are targeting art, throwing tomato soup on a masterpiece by van Gogh and mashed potatoes on a Monet. Their attack is successful: The attention is huge, as is the outrage. How far should civil disobedience go? What means are appropriate, and, above all, what does art have to do with it?

Worldwide, museums and artists are trying to figure out how to deal with the attacks. While the Kunsthalle Hamburg shows solidarity with the climate activists, the Museum Barberini in Potsdam is stunned: Shouldn't protest be done with art rather than against it?

 

There have always been radical acts like these. At the beginning of the 20th century, English women's rights activists, so-called suffragettes, destroyed works of art. Why is it always women who are in the front row in the fight for rights? Such as the activists of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot, who don’t even shy away from Russian president Putin?