West News Wire: In an effort to reflect the potential impact of climate change on the landscapes they depict, a Vienna museum is hanging some of its paintings at an angle.
15 paintings will remain slightly off-center until June 26 as part of the “A Few Degrees More (Would Transform the World into an Uncomfortable Place)” event, according to the Leopold Museum in the Austrian capital. Gustave Courbet, Egon Schiele, and Gustav Klimt pieces are among them.
The paintings are being rotated by the amount of degrees that the Normandy coast and the Attersee region of Austria’s temperature could climb if significant action isn’t made to combat climate change.
It worked with a Vienna-based climate research network, Climate Change Center Austria. Museum director Hans-Peter Wipplinger said in a statement that museums “preserve and impart cultural heritage to the next generations” and “have the potential to positively influence our future action by making people aware of social phenomena.”
He added that the museum is showing solidarity with “the efforts of the climate movement.”
In November, members of the Last Generation Austria group threw a black, oily liquid at Klimt’s 1915 painting “Death and Life” in the Leopold Museum, and one protester glued himself to glass protecting the painting’s frame. The artwork wasn’t damaged.
Wipplinger said at the time that the activists’ concerns were justified but attacking artworks was the wrong way of trying to achieve their aims. He appealed to them to find other ways to make their concerns known.
