The Business Times
business-time-50
LIFE & CULTURE
·
SUBSCRIBERS

How do you tell a vandal from a visitor? Art museums are struggling

It’s not easy to stop a determined climate protester, museum directors say, even as they fear for their masterpieces.

google-preferred-sourceAdd BT as a preferred source
    • Florian Wagner, of the Last Generation group, is restrained while a fellow activist has glued himself to the painting Death and Life by Gustav Klimt after pouring black liquid over it, at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria on Nov 15.
    • Activists from Last Generation threw pea soup at The Sower, an 1888 painting by Vincent Van Gogh, on Nov 4 at Rome's Palazzo Bonaparte.
    • Florian Wagner, of the Last Generation group, is restrained while a fellow activist has glued himself to the painting Death and Life by Gustav Klimt after pouring black liquid over it, at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Austria on Nov 15. PHOTO: AFP
    • Activists from Last Generation threw pea soup at The Sower, an 1888 painting by Vincent Van Gogh, on Nov 4 at Rome's Palazzo Bonaparte. PHOTO: AFP

    Alex Marshall

    Published Sat, Nov 26, 2022 · 06:00 AM

    FOR Hans-Peter Wipplinger, the director of Vienna’s Leopold Museum, November has been challenging.

    As climate protesters across Europe stepped up their attacks against art, Wipplinger took measures to protect his storied collection, which includes famous paintings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Bags were banned; coats, too. The museum hired extra guards to patrol its five floors.

    It didn’t work. Last week, members of a group called Last Generation walked into the museum and threw black liquid at one of Klimt’s major works, Death and Life. A protester had sneaked the liquid into the museum in a hot water bottle strapped to his chest, Wipplinger said.

    Art museumsClimate protestsLife & CultureSpotlight

    TRENDING NOW

    As household size is hardly growing, is there a need to build super-large landed homes?

    Think twice about rebuilding that old landed property into a super-big house to max out GFA

    Trading under the symbol SPCX, SpaceX has picked a handful of brokerage firms to distribute shares in the IPO to retail customers in the US.

    SpaceX’s US$1.75 trillion IPO: How retail investors, including those in Singapore, can buy shares

    Source of wealth establishment processes are typically the most time-intensive elements in onboarding ultra-high-net-worth clients.

    Battle for Asia’s ultra-rich: ‘Singapore can’t afford to keep losing clients to Dubai, Hong Kong’

    Fears of the AI rally overheating have led to tech stocks taking a hit globally.

    STI drops as much as 1.7% as Asia markets hit by tech sell-off

    Latest T-bills Treasury Bills Results & Interest NewsLatest SSB Singapore Savings Bonds NewsLatest COE Certificate of Entitlement News
    Latest Johor-Singapore SEZ NewsLatest BTO Build To Order & Sales of Balance NewsLatest STI Straits Times Index NewsLatest SGX Dividends, Share Price NewsLatest Bonds Market NewsLatest Singapore Stocks To Buy NewsLatest Singapore Economy News
    View More