Two protesters were arrested after hurling mashed potatoes at a Claude Monet painting inside the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, NBC News reports.
The museum released a statement via Twitter declaring “Grainstacks,” the 1890 painting from Monet which was targeted in the protest, was not damaged after undergoing an “immediate conservation investigation.” The pair was eventually charged with trespassing and property damage.
According to Reuters, “Grainstacks” was sold for a record $110.7 million at an auction in 2019.
The German climate activist group the Last Generation took responsibility for the incident. “If it takes a painting—with #MashedPotatoes or #TomatoSoup thrown at it—to make society remember that the fossil fuel course is killing us all,” the tweet reads. “Then we’ll give you #MashedPotatoes on a painting.”
“While I understand the activists’ urgent concern in the face of the climate catastrophe, I am shocked by the means with which they are trying to lend weight to their demands,” Ortrud Westheider, director of Museum Barberini, said in a statement, obtained by USA Today. “It is in the works of the Impressionists that we see the intense artistic engagement with nature.”
A similar incident occurred earlier this month when two protesters, who claimed to be from the group “Just Stop Oil,” flung tomato soup at Vincent van Gogh’s 1888 painting “Sunflower” at the National Gallery in London’s Trafalgar Square. The two were charged with criminal damage and aggravated trespassing, but the painting did not sustain any damage.
