Just Stop Oil protesters have been arrested after smashing the glass covering a Diego Velázquez painting at the National Gallery in London, as police detained dozens of others who blocked Whitehall.
Two activists targeted the glass on the Rokeby Venus painting with safety hammers before they were arrested on suspicion of criminal damage.
The artwork, which was painted by Velázquez in the 1600s, was slashed by the suffragette Mary Richardson in 1914. One of those involved on Monday said: “Women did not get the vote by voting; it is time for deeds not words.”
The Metropolitan police said at least 40 activists who were “slow marching” in Whitehall were also detained and that the road was clear after traffic was stopped for a brief period.
Anyone who doesn’t see how bad climate change is at this point is a fool
For real. Willful ignorance is one thing on its own but when the consequence of it is this catastrophic I’m not sure what to even call it.
I recently had a conversation with a rural gentleman who said “we sure seem to be having some crazy weather lately” but calls climate change a liberal hoax. This conversation took place on the bank of a river that had just experienced something worse than a 1000 year flood. There had been 6 more houses within a stones throw of us less than a week ago. Now they were somewhere downstream along with the very ground on which their foundations had rested.
This man is living the consequences of climate change more than most and yet he still refuses to see the problem for what it is. I have no idea what to call that other than lunacy.
But the world is full of a whole lot of fools, and we still need to convince at least some of them.
And that has what to do with destroying art? Fuck those people, they deserve no beauty in their lives, and neither do you if you stand with them.