Climate advocacy groups took to The Metropolitan Museum of Art last Saturday, June 24 to protest the pending charges against two activists who smeared paint on the protective casing of an Edgar Degas work at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC last April. Around 20 members of Extinction Rebellion NYC and Rise and Resist gathered at The Met’s Gallery 815 in the museum and circled around Degas’s cast sculpture “The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer,” a 1922 cast edition of the artwork targeted at the National Gallery.
The groups are using the hashtag #FreeTheDegasTwo to raise awareness of what they perceive as excessive punishment for the non-violent demonstrations and circulating a petition demanding that Assistant US District Attorney Cameron A. Tepfer drop the charges.
“The Degas Two” refers to 53-year-old activists Joanna Smith and Tim Martin, both members of the climate awareness organization Declare Emergency, who are facing charges of “conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States” and “injury to a National Gallery of Art exhibit.” Each charge carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. The pair reportedly caused $2,400 worth of damage to the pedestal and protective encasement of Degas’s sculpture at the National Gallery.
The Met action called attention to the government suppression of eco-activists through excessive fines and imprisonment despite the lack of violence and no real damages to the works anchoring this trend of climate emergency awareness demonstrations. Nodding to Smith and Martin’s protest, the group members raised their black- and red-painted palms into the air and sealed their mouths with pieces of tape labeled with words like “Glaciers,” “Famines,” “Floods,” and “Wildlife” written on them.
The Met declined to comment.
In a statement pertaining to the intervention last Saturday, Extinction Rebellion pointed to additional instances of excessive government force in response to peaceful protesters, including the police-sanctioned murder of Venezuelan eco-activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, known as Tortuguita, who was shot 57 times by Georgia state police for protesting an enormous law enforcement training encampment colloquially known as “Cop City” in mid-January.
“If our government still possesses any remnants of democracy, it must not permit climate criminals to elude accountability, while simultaneously punishing citizens who dare to challenge their wrongdoing — citizens who themselves are victims of the actions of these climate criminals,” said Georgia B. Smith, an interdisciplinary artist and activist with Extinction Rebellion.
