Climate Protesters Smear Paint on Monet

Climate protesters have once again targeted a famous artwork, this time in Sweden, where two women smeared red paint on the protective glass covering Claude Monet's The Artist's Garden at Giverny and glued themselves to the artwork. Police arrested the protesters at the National Museum in Stockholm, which says the painting is "being examined by the museum's curators to see if there has been any damage," ARTnews reports. "The crime is currently classified as aggravated vandalism," police said in a statement.

The two women, a nurse and a nursing student, wore T-shirts with the logo of the Aterstall Vatmarker ( Restore Wetlands) group. Helen Wahlgren, a spokesperson for the group, tells the AFP that the climate crisis is also a health crisis, with "millions of people already dying from the climate disaster." The group says "gorgeous gardens like those in Monet's painting will soon be a distant memory."

Museum director Per Hedström condemned the action. "We distance ourselves from actions where art or cultural heritage are put at risk of damage, Hedström said, per CNN. "Cultural heritage has great symbolic value, and it is unacceptable to attack or destroy it, for any purpose whatsoever." (Last year, protesters in London dumped soup on a Van Gogh.)