Two supporters of the environmental group, Just Stop Oil, vandalized two Vincent van Gogh paintings at the National Gallery in central London. The two paintings were part of the Poets and Lovers exhibition. The activists threw an orange-coloured vegetable soup over the paintings. The incident happened just hours after two of the group’s supporters, Phoebe Plummer, 23, and Anna Holland, 22, were sentenced to two years and 20 months in prison, respectively, for throwing soup over Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in October 2022, causing £10,000 in damage to the glass-covered painting.
During the incident, onlookers could be heard shouting “no” and “don’t do it” as the activists threw soup over the paintings. One of the paintings, Sunflowers 1888, was the same one that Plummer and Holland vandalized two years ago. Standing in front of the painting wearing a Just Stop Oil T-shirt, one of the protesters shouted out, “Be on the right side of history.”
This is not the first time that paintings at the National Gallery have been targeted by protesters. In 2018, an environmental group threw ink and glue over paintings in a protest against the oil company, BP, which sponsors the gallery. In light of such incidents, the gallery has had to implement stricter security measures for its exhibitions.
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