Protesters with groups like Climate Organizing Hub, New York Communities for Change, and Reclaim Our Tomorrow came to call on MoMA to drop its board chair, Marie-Josée Kravis.

Kravis is married to Henry Kravis, cofounder and co-executive chairman of KKR, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, and a major stakeholder in the Coastal GasLink Pipeline. Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis are major MoMA donors whose names appear on the walls of the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio, where performance- and time-based art is shown.

The protesters handed out fliers with a QR code leading to an open letter that demands that the museum sever all ties with the Kravises. MoMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“MoMA can’t claim to be a sustainable organization that wants to fight climate change but at the same time have a fossil fuel investor as the chair of the board, with their names on the walls,” said Jonathan Westin, an activist with the Climate Organizing Hub, as nervous looking partygoers passed by the small crowd of protesters stationed outside the MoMA entrance. “This is directly inspired by what Nan Goldin and other activists did to get to get rid of the Sackler name at the Met.”

Activist Roni Zahavi-Brunner explained that unlike publicly traded investment groups such as BlackRock, KKR is a private equity group, meaning it is not always beholden to public pressure or regulations. “There’s no one to keep them accountable,” Zahavi-Brunner said.

KKR’s involvement in the controversial Coastal GasLink Pipeline is another reason. Amnesty International reported that the Coastal GasLink Pipeline is in danger of violating human rights laws as they intimidate and harass peaceful protesters on and near the construction site of the pipeline, which has not yet been completed. Indigenous land defenders with the Wet’suwet’en tribe have attempted to block construction of the pipeline for years, claiming that the project violates their sovereign rights and threatens to pollute the land they live on.

One of the protesters rallied his fellow activists, making a connection between the state of the sky and the cause of their protest, saying, “we literally can’t breathe our air because people like Kravis are keeping the fossil fuel industry alive.”

Little more than a dozen protesters eventually marched around the block, where they set up outside the MoMA garden’s gate. MoMA security and police followed them, and by the end of the protest, nearly outnumbered them.

Once the protesters reached the garden gate, through which they could see the partygoers and hear the music, they began their chants again, shouting, “KKR, we see you, we deserve a future too,” “We need clean air, not another billionaire,” and “Henry Kravis you can’t hide, we charge you with ecocide.” Guests milled around, ignoring the protesters until MoMA staffers set up a screen on the other side of the gate.

Police asked protesters to stop using microphones and told them to move their DIY oil rig. They advised that “if you flip that over the gate, that’s attempted murder.” Westin responded, “We weren’t planning on doing that,” before shifting the rig over a few feet. Eventually, police told protesters they had one more warning before arrests would begin, which prompted them to quiet down and begin dispersing.

Activist Alice Hu noted that while police have been more aggressive in attempting to curb protests in the past few weeks, protesting at the museum felt safer than doing so in the lobby of KKR, where activists were quickly arrested.

According to the activists, Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis were at the party, which this year honored artists Barbara Chase-Riboud, Marlene Hess, Ed Ruscha, and Darren Walker, and featured a performance by the band MUNA.

“Look, I personally love the MoMA, but with the climate crisis threatening the future of our planet, this important institution shouldn’t be giving them the license to operate socially,” said Hu. “If I was at a party with friends and a bunch of people I was trying to impress, and people outside started heckling me, I’d leave!”

On Thursday, the news outlet featured a tour of the Palácio da Alvorada with Brazil’s new first lady, Rosângela “Janja” Lula da Silva.

“The overall state of the building, which is Brasília’s most iconic … is not good … and will require many repairs,” explained leading political correspondent Natuza Nery. The residence had torn carpets and couches, leaky ceilings, and broken windows and jacaranda floorboards. Meanwhile, works of art contained within were damaged by sunlight.

A tapestry made by Brazilian artist Emiliano Di Cavalcanti will need to be restored after it was moved from the library and hung in the sun. Additionally, several works of art were allegedly stolen from the residence altogether.

The First Lady felt “rather disappointed” and “shaken” by the palace’s state of disrepair. A Brazilian cactus planted by her husband, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, during his 2003–10 presidency had reportedly also been removed.

The palace was completed in 1958, two years before Brazil’s purpose-built capital was inaugurated by the then-president Juscelino Kubitschek.

Bolsonaro fled the country on the eve of Lula’s swearing in last Sunday. He is now in Florida, and he faces the possibility of prosecution for alleged crimes, including ones related to his response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which he sought to significantly downplay. In Brazil, nearly 700,000 people have died of Covid.

A report in the Brazilian magazine Istoé claimed Bolsonaro is trying to pressure the Italian government to grant his family citizenship and hopes to avoid jail by moving that country, believing that Brazilian authorities would be unable to extradite him.

On Sunday, Brazilian protestors rioting in protest the presidency of Lula, whom Bolsonaro falsely claimed stolen the election, did damage to modernist masterpieces at the Palacío do Planalto, the National Congress, and the Supreme Court.

The protestor was allegedly a woman who wore a Just Stop Oil T-shirt under her sweatshirt. The museum said she first approached van Gogh’s iconic 1889 Self-Portrait but then attempted to throw soup at a Gauguin painting instead.

However, a security guard quickly intercepted her and made her pour out her water bottle filled with soup. The woman reportedly left before she could get arrested, but the museum has filed a complaint for attempted damage.

Following the foiled attempt, France’s Culture minister Rima Abdul Malak told Le Parisien, “How can defending the climate lead to wanting to destroy a work of art? It’s absolutely absurd.” She continued to call on museums to “redouble their vigilance.”

Since June, climate activists with the U.K.-based group Just Stop Oil, as well as ones with other groups in Italy and Germany, have been gluing themselves to the frames of famous paintings in museums. More recently, some activists have thrown various liquid substances at famous paintings. A recent protest involved throwing a can of tomato soup at a Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery.

The protestors have thus far intentionally—and largely successfully—avoided damaging the paintings. In most cases, only the frames of the paintings have incurred damage.

The painting, which hangs in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands, is the latest to be targeted by climate activists. Earlier this month, activists threw tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the UK’s National Gallery, and, a few days later, activists threw mashed potatoes at Claude Monet’s Meules at a museum in Germany.

Climate change protests that involve gluing or throwing liquids at paintings began in late June, with most actions committed by the UK climate activism group Just Stop Oil, with other activist organizations in Germany and Italy joining in.

The activists who took part in the action at the Hague Thursday wore Just Stop Oil t-shirts, but aren’t confirmed Just Stop Oil protestors.

“How do you feel when you see something beautiful and priceless apparently being destroyed before your eyes?” asked one of the protesters in The Hague, according to reporting by the Guardian. “Do you feel outraged? Good. Where is that feeling when you see the planet being destroyed?”

There is no information yet as to whether or not the painting has been damaged. However, none of the works targeted in these protests have been damaged so far; destruction has not been activists’ stated intentions.

In an interview with ARTnews, Simon Bramwell, co-founder of global environmental activist group Extinction Rebellion, who has joined Just Stop Oil protestors, explained why young activists chose this form of protest.

“This is not about negating the beauty of art but a way of saying that our priorities are absolutely fucked right now. There are people wandering around these art galleries finding beauty inherent in art that depicts nature, and yet are unable to comprehend the beauty that is disappearing with our ancient forests, or the hundreds of species that are going extinct each day.”

El Universal reported that Claudia Sheinbaum, who serves as Head of Government in Mexico City (a position akin to a state governor), had made the call to remove the feminist “anti-monument.” The statue currently appears in a roundabout in the city, and will soon be replaced by another monument.

In 2020, amid a wave of protests that saw monuments toppled all over the world, Mexican activists took it upon themselves to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus that stood on Paseo de la Reforma Avenue.

The government proposed that the statue be replaced with a new work of art honoring Indigenous people by Pedro Reyes. But this plan was quickly condemned by feminists and artists who pointed out that a white male artist may not have been the best person for this job.

The pedestal stood empty until activists hoisted their own statue, a purple piece of metal that shows a woman in silhouette with her arm raised. In the back, there is a stand with the word “JUSTICIA” carved on it. It has stood on the pedestal in the roundabout since it was installed September of 2021.

The state that will replace it, according to El Universal, is a replica of The Young Woman of Amajac. Made between 1450 and 1521, the statue was discovered by farmers in Veracruz just last year.

Sheinbaum said that she wanted to place a work on the roundabout that would honor Indigenous women.

“They are women who have historically fought for our country, and it is precisely the indigenous women who have had the least voice, who were the most discriminated against,” Sheimbaum said at the press conference. “The idea is to have a special place for them on Paseo de la Reforma.”

The women who put the guerrilla statue in place disagree that The Young Woman of Amajac is the correct work to occupy that space. In an interview with Courthouse News, members of the feminist coalition Antimonumenta Viva Nos Queremos, Antimonument (We Want Us Alive, Anti-Monument) described the decision to place the Amajac work on the roundabout as mere tokenization.

“They speak of indigenous women, of inclusion, they have a political agenda they must stick to, but there’s no real inclusion,” said coalition member Marcela, who, like the group’s other members, preferred to conceal her last name.

Activists claim that the government-approved statue would potentially destroy the meaning that the roundabout took on for Mexican feminists.

“It’s a site of living memory, a symbol that embraces all the struggles of women, not just one person or group,” said Fernanda, another coalition member, in an interview with Courthouse News.

The roundabout became colloquially known as Roundabout of the Women Who Fight. It is covered in graffiti bearing feminist statements as well as a wall with names of gender violence victims. The roundabout has become a recurring site for protests and gatherings that have drawn attention to an epidemic of killings of women and girls in Mexico that has become known as femicide.

Mexico City’s recent waves of feminist protests over the past few years has indubitably marked the city, both physically and psychically, and the coalition doesn’t want that forgotten.

“It’s not about putting up a monument to worship the past, but one to recognize the present fight, all the women who have disappeared,” coalition member Érica told Courthouse News.

The MASS MoCA staff voted to join Local 2110 UAW, which also represents museum workers at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim, last summer. Since then, the unionized employees have been trying to bargain for their first union contract.

The union is hoping to obtain a minimum hourly rate of $18 for the first year of the contract, with increases in 2023 and 2024 that get the minimum “closer to $20 per hour” by the end of the contract, according to the announcement of the one-day strike. MASS MoCA’s current offer is a $16 per hour minimum with no guaranteed increases, the union said.

With two-thirds of the staff making $15.50 an hour, most of the Museum’s employees are living well below a living wage, according to MIT’s living wage calculator for Berkshire County, where MASS MoCA is located and where most of its employees live.

“Many of us live locally in North Adams. By raising hourly rates to something more livable, MASS MoCA would not only be supporting its employees, but helping lift the community,” said Isabel Twanmo, a box office representative who is on the union’s negotiating committee, said in a statement.

Maro Elliott, the manager of institutional giving and a member of the union’s negotiating committee, said in a statement that the hope with the new contract is to “create a more accessible, equitable, and just workplace.”

“While we respect our employees’ right to strike as a means of expressing their views, we are also disappointed in their decision, given the positive and collaborative environment that we have worked to foster during our collective bargaining process with the UAW,” a MASS MoCA representative wrote in an email to ARTnews.

The union is not just striking for better pay but in protest following what it has called a pattern of bad faith negotiating. The union has filed several unfair labor practice charges against MASS MoCA with the National Labor Relations Board, one of which was filed after the museum promised “additional raises” to certain employees if they convinced the union to lower its wage demands, according to the press release.

While MASS MoCA did not deny this in their emailed statement, the museum claimed to have been “negotiating in good faith with the UAW in order to reach a fair contract for both sides,” and that they have worked towards certain objectives “when their proposals have provided for a positive employee experience, and supported our museum culture of teamwork, collaboration, and excellence.”

“We’ve made significant progress towards reaching a contract and look forward to getting back to the bargaining table to continue our negotiations,” read the statement.

“Throughout months of bargaining, MASS MoCA’s representatives have been antagonistic toward our union, telling us the arts and artists come first. We all love MASS MoCA but we also have to live,” said union worker Maro Elliott in a statement.

The sculpture, titled ALERT, is meant to represent an abstracted figure shown in a squatting position. But the students claim that it looks more like a man with an erect penis.

In a politely worded motion, the students wrote, “Regardless of artistic intent, Alert is interpreted by many as phallic.”

“There is nothing inherently wrong with phallic imagery in art,” they continued. “However, the phallic interpretation’s preoccupation with the penis could be considered inappropriate for a grand public display, especially given the statue’s size.”

ALERT, set to be installed this summer, is nearly 20 feet tall; the portion that juts out, which could represent either a set of bent legs or a penile shaft, is itself 10 feet long.

The statue is meant to adorn the newly built Dangoor Plaza, which is flanked by a library and a chemistry building. That the sculpture would become a focal point for a section of the school associated with the sciences rubbed the student union the wrong way, given the “issues with gender ratio and inclusion” in the sciences at the College and in the wider world.

The Art Newspaper commented that the Imperial College has a severe gender imbalance among its student body, with only 39 of those enrolled there being women, according to university-supplied data.

In a statement made prior to the students’ motion, Gormley said of the sculpture, “Through the conversion of anatomy into an architectural construction I want to re-assess the relation between body and space. Balancing on the balls of the feet while squatting on its haunches and surveying the world around it the attitude of this sculpture is alive, alert and awake.”

ARTnews has reached out to Gormley for comment in response to the student union’s motion.

Hannah Hunt, a 23-year-old psychology student from Brighton, said in a statement released by Just Stop Oil that these actions would not end until the U.K. government makes a “meaningful statement that it will end new oil and gas licenses.”

The actions have provoked some ire, a not uncommon response to the group’s strategies. But Just Stop Oil activists say that these actions are intended to capture the attention of a public that is fatally bent on ignoring the realities of climate change. When young Just Stop Oil activist Louis McKechnie attached himself to a goal post in the middle of a soccer game, not only was he the target of verbal abuses, one spectator leapt from his chair and attempted to stab McKechnie.

Today, ARTnews got on the phone with Simon Bramwell, a Reading-based cofounder of the Extinction Rebellion movement who recently joined Just Stop Oil activists when they attached themselves to Giampietrino’s The Last Supper (ca. 1520) on Tuesday at the Royal Academy of Arts.

ARTnews: Why did you begin practicing acts of civil disobedience? 

Simon Bramwell: It started a some years back. I had been a nature educator. I would teach adults and children bushcraft, how to garden and survive in the backwoods, how to forage, make shelter, how to connect to nature. And in the past couple of decades, I’d been noticing how nature has been disappearing around me. It got to the point where I could no longer I can no longer stare kids in the eye, to be perfectly honest, and know that I’m trying to connect them to a nature that’s disappearing. The majority of the planet is in a state of either ignorance or indifference around the reality of climate change, and I think it’s absolutely vital that as many of us as possible involve ourselves in non violent civil resistance with the youth of this planet in mind.

Why target cultural institutions as the site of civil disobedience? 

Politics will always follow culture, so it’s absolutely vital that we hold the ideals of our cultural institutions to account. And the hour is late. As a planet, we’re waking up to the fact that a 1.5-degree [Celsius] increase means catastrophe and that figure’s already in the rearview mirror. If we hit 2 degrees, that could mean that 20 percent of the Earth becomes uninhabitable. It’s time to bring the institutions of our culture on board in regards to the truth telling of these times.

How did the idea to attach activists to paintings come about?

I remember the shock when the Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei smashed that Ming era vase back in 1995. That was such an iconoclastic moment, and it was in a way a direct inspiration for these actions. We were asking: How do we cut through the noise, the endless back and forth of Tories and Labor, the school shootings? How do we do this in time and trying to wake people up to the fact that where we live is on fire?

I was reading some of the statements the activists had released and a similar refrain kept popping up: “I love art and I love this painting but I love the planet and people more.” Do we have to choose between art and caring about climate change? How do you interpret these statements?

It’s highly provocative and to a degree, I can’t get myself in the mindset of some of these young folks. I grew up during a relatively privileged era, but with what’s in front of them right now, I can absolutely see why they’d also make those comparisons. What they’re saying is that we need to set our priorities straight and set very pragmatic goals concerning the continuation of life on this planet. There are millions of people starving because of climate change–related causes, mass migrations are going to begin. This is not about negating the beauty of art but a way of saying that our priorities are absolutely fucked right now. There are people wandering around these art galleries finding beauty inherent in art that depicts nature, and yet are unable to comprehend the beauty that is disappearing with our ancient forests, or the hundreds of species that are going extinct each day.

Isn’t putting art at odds with survival a kind of dangerous path?

We are certainly headed for some very overt forms of fascism—it’s happening in your country right now, and it’s happening in mine with the political right. This is something that happens when inequality is highly visible. In times of scarcity people defer to authority. But this is why we need to challenge what’s at the core of our cultural values, because we can’t say that we’re civilized or that we have cultural values if we’re intent on ignoring the destruction of this planet and the suffering of people.

What do you think of how museums and cultural institutions are currently addressing climate change?

I think the interventions made so far have not worked, and like the environmental movement of the past 30 years, there is need for admission of failure. These lukewarm exhibitions around climate just won’t do, like the one the Royal Academy has on at the moment for their Summer Exhibition. There’s a big flag outside the exhibition entrance that says “Lost Species” and it’s that kind of bullshit that we need to get beyond. These species aren’t lost. They’re not down behind the back of a sofa. They’re not in the sock drawer. They’re being destroyed, and they’ve been destroyed by a culture that is insisting on infinite growth within finite systems.

What we want is for all these institutions to not only admit the truth of these times, but also to support the idea that nonviolent civil resistance is the best pathway forward that we have right now and, on top of that, to support the youth who are going to be going literally through hell in the next 40 or so years.

How did the staff react when the action was performed at the Royal Academy?

The reaction from the museum staff was at first one of concern and incredulity. Once they realized we weren’t bent on destroying the painting but that we were only glued to a modern oak frame, they started relaxing. After that point, we started to connect with them and a lot of them were agreeing with us. They weren’t necessarily agreeing with our methods, but they were certainly agreeing with the need for such actions. We talked to a museum official, and at one point one of the security guards joined us in song, “There Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” which was absolutely bloody beautiful.

Reactions to the Just Stop Oil actions haven’t always been so positive. Do you worry that these actions draw more negative attention than positive?

That’s a hard one. I worry about people’s safety, I worry for the young. But they feel that they don’t have anything left to lose, staring down the barrel of the climate gun, as it were. There’s always going to be a section of society that really struggles with comprehending the complexity of the ethical triage in front of us. It was the same for the suffragists in England who faced death threats, sexual abuse, brutality in prison, there are parallels in the U.S. with the civil rights movement. It’s absolutely vital to put ourselves in the way of the leviathan. We know that’s going to lead to bodily harm. We know it’s going to lead to reputational harm, to unpopularity. And yet there’s a clear need to tell the truth and to act like that matters.

So these actions are something that institutions in the U.K. should expect to keep happening for the foreseeable future?

Yes, indeed—and going forward, institutions worldwide.

The actions follow similar ones last week in which activists in the United Kingdom attached themselves to Van Gogh’s Peach Trees in Blossom (1889), Horatio McCulloch’s My Heart’s in the Highlands (1860), and J.M.W. Turner’s Thomson’s Aeolian Harp (1809).

While the activists have typically attached themselves only to the frames of the paintings, they took a different approach with The Hay Wain, Constable’s famous landscape depicting the English countryside. The activists covered the painting with a reimagined scene of a countryside full of dying trees, planes, and an encroaching city. As a result, there was some very minor damage to the painting.

“The Hay Wain suffered minor damage to its frame and there was also some disruption to the surface of the varnish on the painting, both of which have now been successfully dealt with,” a spokesperson for the National Gallery said in an interview with The Art Newspaper.

The painting has since been rehung.

Hannah Hunt, a 23-year-old psychology student from Brighton said in a statement released by Just Stop Oil, “I’m here because our government plans to license 40 new UK oil and gas projects in the next few years. This makes them complicit in pushing the world towards an unlivable climate and in the death of billions of people in the coming decades.”

She added that the actions in cultural institutions will end only when the “UK government makes a meaningful statement that it will end new oil and gas licenses.”

At the Courtauld, two activists with the group affixed themselves to Vincent van Gogh’s Peach Trees in Blossom (1889), which is considered a highlight of the museum’s Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings.

In a statement released by Just Stop Oil, one of the protesters, Louis McKechnie, said, “It is immoral for cultural institutions to stand by and watch whilst our society descends into collapse. Galleries should close. Directors of art institutions should be calling on the government to stop all new oil and gas projects immediately. We are either in resistance or we are complicit.”

The Courtauld has reported that the painting is undamaged.

“The relevant work, Peach Trees in Blossom by Van Gogh, has been removed from display,” wrote a representative of the Courtauld in an email. “Our initial assessment is that the painting is undamaged. The frame will require treatment to remove glue residue before the work can be returned to display.”

Yesterday, activists Carmen Lean and Hannah Torrance Bright attached themselves to Horatio McCulloch’s painting My Heart’s in the Highlands (1860). There have not been any reports of damage to the McCulloch painting.

Torrance Bright is currently a student at the Glasgow School of Art, and Lean is an architecture student.

“I’m an artist, I love art, but instead of spending my time making art I’m taking actions like this, spending time in and out of cells, and being punished by our legal system for begging the government to let my generation have a future,” said Torrance Bright in a statement released by Just Stop Oil. “We hold these works of art sacred, but what is more sacred than life itself?”

Lean explained the choice of My Heart’s in the Highlands in the same statement.

“This landscape was painted in 1860 at the height of the highland clearances, when whole crofting [small scale farming] communities were evicted by a new class of landlords ruthlessly pursuing their own private interests,” said Lean. “It was only when crofters organized and resisted that they won rights.”

Lean added that the threat from oil and gas companies should spur people to learn from history, saying, “Civil disobedience is scary but it is the only sane thing to do and you won’t regret it.”

The Art Newspaper reported that as the protesters were being led away from the museum, one of them said that the “art world is responsible; every sector of our culture is responsible.”

The museum closed early yesterday but reopened on a normal schedule today.

Update, 6/30/22, 2:54 p.m.: This story was updated to include Just Stop Oil’s action at the Courtauld Institute.

Update, 7/1/22, 10:25 a.m.: This story was updated to include a statement from the Courtauld Institute.