Avoiding the Danger of Relative Privation When Lives and Art Are Lost
A change in the way society values art can address the growing popularity of putting art in the crosshairs to make a point.
Putting art in the crosshairs to make a point is a disturbing strategy that has been gaining in popularity among activists. On April 28, 2023, a panel convened at the Art for Tomorrow conference at the St. Regis in Florence, Italy, to address the growing issue of art and protest.1 The conference followed the vandalism of paintings by Van Gogh, Monet, and Vermeer by members of Just Stop Oil, environmental activists seeking news coverage of their cause. Although these activists avoided harm to the works themselves, defacing protective glass coverings and ornate frames, they were playing with fire while establishing an unsettling precedent.
In addition to attracting media attention, these activists were also trying to make a point that society protects works of art yet fails to safeguard human beings by being complacent with climate change. For example, when Just Stop Oil activists threw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London in October 2022, they shouted, “What is worth more? Art or life?... Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?”2
Mere hours before the panel convened, news broke of another vandalism, this time of a Degas sculpture’s display case by Declare Emergency, which similarly warned, in an email to ARTnews, that “art… and everything we love is at stake if we don’t tackle the climate emergency with the urgency that it deserves.”3
While these groups might have compelling points, this method of delivering them should be unthinkable. Unlike violent terrorists, activists should know better than to jeopardize the world’s artistic treasures. Even though they may not harm the works, the mere appearance of doing so could encourage others to follow suit, and it is only a matter of time until more art is senselessly lost. (Just Stop Oil has threatened to escalate their protests, telling ARTnews in December 2022 that the group may begin slashing paintings if climate change is not adequately addressed.)4
Unfortunately, no criminal punishment can restore art that has been destroyed, and the efficacy of punitive efforts as a deterrent is questionable. Stopping violent terrorists from destroying art and cultural sites has no easy answer. However, there is something we can do to shift the Overton window for activists while reinforcing the notion that we are a society that values art and considers what it represents to be sacrosanct.
My thinking on this topic began thirty years ago today, on May 27, 1993, when I happened to be standing alone late at night on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, half a mile down the Arno from the St. Regis. A college student, I had just arrived for a second summer of study abroad. The medieval arch-stone bridge was desolate, and in the clearing between the shuttered gold shops, I peered eastward, mesmerized by the serenity.
Suddenly, a loud explosion shattered my reverie. A fiery cloud raged upward, hovering just above the rooftops for a moment as if to make sure I saw it, then receded.
This horrifying experience shook me on many levels. Above all was the loss of life such an explosion implied. As I began to walk back cautiously to my apartment, I saw first responders tending to the injured and later learned that five people, including a child and a baby, died. The explosion, which became known as the via dei Georgofili bombing, was determined to have been the result of 277 kg of TNT placed by the Mafia in a stolen Fiat Fiorino parked by where I had just walked ten minutes prior.
On top of the loss of life, historic buildings crumbled while over 200 of the Uffizi’s paintings and sculptures were damaged, including a few destroyed. The perpetrators had a point to make against the Italian government and placed their deadly bomb so dangerously close to the Uffizi Gallery, a vital cultural center, as a tactic. Unlike the activists, they knew their actions would cause serious harm to both people and art.
When the mourning of the destruction of art is suppressed, we lose an opportunity to reflect on our humanity and shared history.
Art offers the people collective pride for our rich, diverse history. Fritz Koenig’s The Sphere, which once handsomely commanded the space between the Twin Towers in Lower Manhattan, now sits in nearby Liberty Park, damaged from the September 11 attacks—thus serving as a powerful reminder of physical art’s illusion of permanence and that even a colossus of 20-plus tons of solid bronze is vulnerable.
In the three decades since I witnessed this explosion destroy lives and art, I have found it taboo to talk with others about the loss of art when human beings were also harmed. I believe that a logical fallacy known as relative privation is at play. Logical fallacies are arguments that may seem plausible but involve faulty reasoning, and relative privation occurs when we dismiss or devalue a problem because a more important or deserving one exists. It seems disrespectful to lament the loss of art when people have died. In a paper based on a scholarly convention on “Cultural Heritage under Siege” at the Getty Center in May 2019, co-editors James Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss noted this tension, writing that the protection of people and heritage is “intimately intertwined” before pointing out that “some humanitarians do not agree” and believe “we can do one thing rather than the other.”5
When the mourning of the destruction of art is suppressed, we lose an opportunity to reflect on our humanity and shared history. We can grieve art, whether it is a painting in Florence or a giant Buddha in Bamiyan, as a collective loss for the human race. Indeed, in editing the late 2022 book Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities, Cuno and Weiss stated that “when cultural heritage is destroyed, there are costs to all of us. Many observers view culture as a shared endeavor across peoples, time, and place—as evidence of our common humanity.”6 The more we deny ourselves the opportunity to express sadness and outrage over lost art, the less connected we become as we tacitly permit art to be threatened in this way by more activists.
Art that takes physical forms is, of course, not the only type of creative human output. However, unlike more intangible examples such as a musical or theatrical performance, physical art stands exposed to potential threats every day. Highlighting this point, the National Committee in Germany of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which includes directors from 92 art institutions worldwide, sounded the alarm about people who choose to attack art for their cause. Such protesters “severely underestimate the fragility of these irreplaceable objects, which must be preserved as part of our world cultural heritage,” the directors wrote, slamming their “risky endangerment.”7
As civilization persists and progresses, its creative fruits must be preserved. If we were to acknowledge the faulty logic of relative privation and allow ourselves the freedom to express grief and outrage over lost art even when lives are lost, activists would feel less inclined to seek publicity in such an unsavory way—and hesitant to risk undermining their efforts by alienating others through misguided choices.
Works Cited
Art for Tomorrow. “Art for Tomorrow Conference: Can the Arts Be a Way Out?” May 28, 2023. https://www.artfortomorrow.org/fileadmin/uploads/aft/forms/2023_AFT_17x24_Agenda_FINAL4_no_crop_web.pdf.
Cain, Sian. “Climate Activists Attacking Art ‘Severely Underestimate Fragility of Works’, Gallery Directors Warn.” The Guardian. November 11, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/11/climate-activists-attacking-art-severely-underestimate-fragility-of-works-gallery-directors-warn.
Cuno, James, and Thomas G. Weiss, eds. “Cultural Heritage under Siege: Laying the Foundation for a Legal and Political Framework to Protect Cultural Heritage at Risk in Zones of Armed Conflict.” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy, no. 4 (2020). https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-4/introduction/.
Cuno, James, and Thomas G. Weiss, eds. Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022. https://www.getty.edu/publications/cultural-heritage-mass-atrocities/downloads/CunoWeiss_CHMA.pdf.
Ho, Karen K. “Climate Protesters Smear Paint on Degas Sculpture’s Display Case at National Gallery of Art.” ARTnews. April 27, 2023. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/climate-protesters-smear-paint-degas-sculpture-national-gallery-of-art-1234665877/amp/.
ICOM Deutschland. “Statement: Attacks on Artworks in Museums.” November 9, 2022. https://icom-deutschland.de/de/nachrichten/564-statement-attacks-on-artworks-in-museums.html.
Solomon, Tessa. “Environmental Activists Threaten to Start Slashing Paintings If Action Is Not Taken to Stop Climate Change.” ARTnews. December 2, 2022. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/climate-activists-threaten-slashing-paintings-1234648889/.
Art for Tomorrow, “Art for Tomorrow Conference: Can the Arts Be a Way Out?” May 28, 2023, https://www.artfortomorrow.org/fileadmin/uploads/aft/forms/2023_AFT_17x24_Agenda_FINAL4_no_crop_web.pdf.
Sian Cain, “Climate Activists Attacking Art ‘Severely Underestimate Fragility of Works’, Gallery Directors Warn,” The Guardian, November 11, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/11/climate-activists-attacking-art-severely-underestimate-fragility-of-works-gallery-directors-warn.
Karen K. Ho, “Climate Protesters Smear Paint on Degas Sculpture’s Display Case at National Gallery of Art,” ARTnews, April 27, 2023, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/climate-protesters-smear-paint-degas-sculpture-national-gallery-of-art-1234665877/amp/.
Tessa Solomon, “Environmental Activists Threaten to Start Slashing Paintings If Action Is Not Taken to Stop Climate Change,” ARTnews, December 2, 2022, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/climate-activists-threaten-slashing-paintings-1234648889/.
James Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., “Cultural Heritage under Siege: Laying the Foundation for a Legal and Political Framework to Protect Cultural Heritage at Risk in Zones of Armed Conflict,” J. Paul Getty Trust Occasional Papers in Cultural Heritage Policy, no. 4 (2020), Introduction, https://www.getty.edu/publications/occasional-papers-4/introduction/.
James Cuno and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., Cultural Heritage and Mass Atrocities (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2022), 6, https://www.getty.edu/publications/cultural-heritage-mass-atrocities/downloads/CunoWeiss_CHMA.pdf.
ICOM Deutschland, “Statement: Attacks on Artworks in Museums,” November 9, 2022, https://icom-deutschland.de/de/nachrichten/564-statement-attacks-on-artworks-in-museums.html.