Hours After the Protesters Who Threw Soup at a van Gogh Were Sentenced, Three More Activists Repeated the Stunt
Two members of Just Stop Oil staged the original demonstration in late 2022. Group members say the harsh penalties will not deter their efforts
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In late 2022, Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland entered London’s National Gallery and hurled tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers. The duo wore shirts displaying the logo for Just Stop Oil, a controversial environmental activism group known for its nonviolent demonstrations in protest of fossil fuels.
“What is worth more—art or life?” Plummer asked museumgoers. “Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting, or the protection of our planet and people?”
The soup didn’t harm the painting—which was protected behind glass—but it did cause an estimated $13,400 worth of damage to its 17th-century frame. When the two protesters were found guilty of criminal damage in July, Judge Christopher Hehir told them to be “prepared, in practical and emotional terms, to go to prison.” Now, he has sentenced Plummer, 23, to two years behind bars. Holland, 22, received 20 months.
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“The action you took was extreme, disproportionate and criminally idiotic,” Hehir said in court, per Politico’s Karl Mathiesen. “You came within the width of a pane of glass of irreparably damaging or destroying the painting.”
During the trial, the activists insisted that the sentence would not hinder their efforts to fight climate change, as the Washington Post’s Shannon Osaka reports. “I made my choices and I’m happy with them,” Plummer said at the sentencing on September 27. “I’ve found peace in acting on my conscience.”
A few hours later, three more climate activists arrived at the National Gallery. They entered the museum’s new van Gogh exhibition—“Poets and Lovers”—and threw soup on two sunflower paintings by the Dutch Post-Impressionist.
“There are people in prison for demanding an end to new oil and gas,” said one of the protesters in a video of the incident, adding: “Future generations will regard these prisoners of conscience to be on the right side of history.”
After examining the two paintings, experts determined they had not been damaged, according to Hyperallergic’s Isa Farfan. The activists have been arrested, and the artworks are already back on display in the exhibition.
BREAKING: 2 VAN GOGH PAINTINGS SOUPED HOURS AFTER PHOEBE AND ANNA SENTENCED
— Just Stop Oil (@JustStop_Oil) September 27, 2024
3 Just Stop Oil supporters have thrown soup over 2 of Van Gogh paintings in the 'Poets and Lovers' exhibition at the National Gallery.
Support people in resistance: https://t.co/Rh65arOwa1 pic.twitter.com/Tc3Bvd10OB
Just Stop Oil’s goal is to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal in the United Kingdom by 2030. In recent years, activists affiliated with the organization—and similar groups around the globe—have been staging climate protests at museums and cultural institutions, often targeting famous artworks and artifacts.
The British government has responded with new laws that Human Rights Watch describes as “draconian.” According to Just Stop Oil, more than two dozen climate protesters are now behind bars in the U.K.
Earlier this week, Greenpeace U.K. released an open letter signed by more than 100 artists, curators and art historians asking that Plummer and Holland be spared jail time. They argued that their stunt belongs to a long tradition of similar artistic acts.
“Since at least 1900, avant-garde artists have called for or delivered iconoclasm as part of their artistic practice,” reads the letter. “These activists should not receive custodial sentences for an act that connects entirely to the artistic canon. … [The protest] will inevitably enrich the story and social meaning of Sunflowers; and will be remembered, discussed and valued in itself as a creative and incisive work.”
During the sentencing, Plummer gave a 20-minute speech to the judge, per the Guardian’s Damien Gayle.
“I believe that non-violent civil resistance is the best, if not the only, tool that people have in order to bring about the rapid change required to protect life from the accelerating climate emergency,” Plummer said, adding: “If you think that taking an authoritarian approach to sentencing today will somehow stop ordinary people standing up for justice, I believe you will be proved wrong.”
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