Whether the cake on Mona Lisa’s “face” at the Louvre [1] or a Trojan Horse with oil company BP’s logo in front of the British Museum [2], recent art news consists of climate change, restitution, indigenous rights, transparency, representation, and fair employment protests in museums. But protest in museums is not new: In 1914 the Rokeby Venus painting by Velazquez was sliced as a protest against the arrest of a suffrage leader. In 1974, Picasso’s Guernica was spray painted in an act of protest against the perpetuators of Vietnam War massacres. More recently, “Just Stop Oil” protests have raised awareness of climate change issues, which stirred up new controversies around protests in museums.
