West News Wire: Two climate activists attempted in vain on Friday to glue themselves to Edvard Munch’s masterpiece “The Scream” at an Oslo museum, according to Norwegian police, but the waif-like figure in the painting was unharmed.
A third person videotaped the couple that attempted to attach to the painting, according to Norwegian news agency NTB, and police claimed they were informed by the National Museum of Norway and had three persons under their “control.”
The glass-protected painting’s exhibit space, according to the museum, “was cleared of the public and closed,” and will reopen as soon as practical. The remainder of the museum stayed open.
The glass mount had glue residue, according to the police.
A video of the incident showed museum guards holding two activists with one shouting “I scream for people dying” and another one shouts “I scream when lawmakers ignore science” while a person was shielding the painting from the protesters.
Environmental activists from the Norwegian organization “Stopp oljeletinga” Norwegian for Stop Oil Exploration were behind the stunt, saying they “wanted to pressure lawmakers into stopping oil exploration.” Norway is a major producer of offshore oil and gas.
“We are campaigning against ‘Scream’ because it is perhaps Norway’s most famous painting,” activist spokeswoman Astrid Rem told The Associated Press. “There have been lots of similar actions around Europe, they have managed something that no other action has managed: achieve an extremely large amount of coverage and press.”
It was the latest episode in which climate activists have targeted famous paintings in European museums.
Two Belgian activists who targeted Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” in a Dutch museum in October were sentenced to two months in prison. The painting wasn’t damaged and was returned to its wall a day later.
Earlier this month, climate protesters threw mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting in a German museum and a similar protest happened in London, where protesters threw soup over Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” at the National Gallery. In both those cases, the paintings also weren’t damaged.
