At the end of August, German members of the environmental and climate activist group Letzte Generation (Last Generation) glued themselves to the frame of Raphael's Sistine Madonna in the Old Masters Picture Gallery in Dresden, Germany. Then again, on the 23rd of October, two members of the group went one step further at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam: they vandalised Claude Monet's work Haystacks with mashed potatoes and filmed the action in a video posted on YouTube and social media.
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Last Generation echoed the approach of the group Just Stop Oil, who poured tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London on 14 October.
Monet's painting was immediately examined after the incident. However, since it is protected by a pane of glass, no damage has been reported on the painting itself, allowing it to return to the exhibition later this week.
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"I am relieved that the picture was not damaged and that we will soon be able to open the work to the public again," said Ortrud Westheider, director of the Museum Barberini, in a statement from the museum. “Endangering paintings in museums and willingly accepting their destruction is not a contribution to climate protection. If the activists had been interested in the pictures, they would know that impressionist painters like Monet in particular dealt intensively with changes in nature in their pictures."
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Haystacks (Meules, in French), which Monet painted in 1890, was bought at Sotheby's in 2019 by software billionaire Hasso Plattner for $110.7 million (£84.8 million). It is the Impressionist's most expensive painting. Since then, it has been one of the highlights of the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, founded by the Plattner Foundation.
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At the request of museum founder Hasso Plattner, the Museum Barberini will remain closed until 30 October. Until then, they want to enter into dialogue with the current lenders and analyse the security standards.
