A pair of climate activists smeared maple syrup on a Vancouver Art Gallery painting before taping it to a wall on Saturday, bringing a number of environmental art protest movements around the world to Canada. A video posted on social media shows two female protesters pouring the syrup on Emily Carr’s painting. logs and sky, and starting a speech against the Coast GasLink pipeline. The project is being built on British Columbia’s north coast after years of controversy over its passage through Wet’suwet’en territory. “We’re here to raise awareness about the climate crisis, the climate crisis is the biggest crisis of our time,” 24-year-old Emily Kelsall says in the video. The camera pans to the rest of the room, where a guard and a handful of museum visitors stand by. “Instead of acting responsibly, the government is building fossil fuel infrastructure.” Police spokesman Sergeant Steve Addison said they were contacted by the VAG about the incident on Saturday afternoon. He added that police “know who the women are” and will conduct a full investigation. VAG, which condemned the protest, said they believed there would be no permanent damage to the panel. He added that staff were assisting police with their investigation. BREAKING: MAPLE SYRUP THROWN AT EMILY CARR’S PAINTING BY ACTIVISTS 💀 Why are we protecting these paintings when we don’t respect indigenous laws or protect the millions of lives that will be lost due to climate and social collapse? pic.twitter.com/qDB0W9AuE3 — Stop Fracking Around (@StopFrackingA) November 12, 2022 “We support the free expression of ideas, but not at the expense of suppressing the ideas and artistic expressions of others or otherwise preventing people from accessing those ideas,” said Anthony Kiendl, director and CEO of VAG. The two protesters are part of a group called Stop Fracking Around. Spokesman Don Marshall said the SFA had chosen to emulate European climate protesters, who threw food at famous works of art to compare their preservation to the lack of protection for life. Some of the paintings targeted include Leonardo da Vinci Mona Liza in Paris, which was smeared with cake and by Edvard Munch The cry and Oslo. In an interview, Ms. Kelsall said museum staff told her they understood what she was trying to do, but she should press charges. She said staff let her and the other protester leave the building after they took pictures of their IDs. He said he was concerned about the charges, but that the risk was worth it for their cause. Earlier this week, 92 high-profile museum leaders around the world came together to denounce the series of art protests in an open letter, although they stressed that museums are spaces of “social discourse”. Museum leaders said the protesters “grossly underestimate the fragility of these irreplaceable objects, which must be preserved as part of our world cultural heritage”. “As museum directors entrusted with the care of these works, we are deeply shocked by their perilous danger.” Mr Marshall said it was important to their team to choose a work of art that was protected by glass and would not be permanently damaged by the attack. He added that Stumps and Sky was specifically targeted because it shows a vast landscape of tree stumps, which he said mark the ancient logging that took place in B.C. – a process that environmentalists have protested. Mr Marshall also said the method of protest is also important because he wants people to experience shock – the same he believes they should feel about the ongoing impact of climate change. Some of those consequences, he said, include the deadly heat dome that hit Western Canada last year, which led to 619 deaths. “It’s important to preserve art, but it’s hard to compare the 619 people who died and this piece as art,” he said.
