Two environmental activists who threw a can of tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Sunflower” have been sentenced to two years in prison.
In October of 2022, Phoebe Plummer, then 21 years old, and Anna Holland, then 20 years old, entered the museum of the National Gallery in London and continued the famous work on soup. Both of these activists belonging to the Just Stop Oil group, then attached the painting to the wall next to it and used the subsequent display on social media to spread their concerns about global climate change. The two activists were sentenced on Friday at Southwark Crown Court in London for causing damage estimated at £10,000 to the frame of the painting, reports The Guardian.
In a statement released on the same day of the sentencing, Just Stop Oil noted that “Plummer and Holland knew the painting was protected from the soup by a tough pane of glass when they threw the red-orange missive, creating a Pollock-esque splatter. mustard yellow, blooming flowers.” Ideally, Van Gogh’s painting was not damaged by the incident.
“My choice today is to accept whatever sentence I receive with a smile, knowing that I have found peace in doing what I can to prevent countless millions of innocent people from suffering and dying. I found peace by working with my conscience,” Plummer said in a statement.
Holland, meanwhile, says the following: “We don’t expect justice for a dying system that has been damaged by reliance on fossil fuels. Jail sentences, no matter how long, will not deter us.”
It’s easy to sympathize with these girls. They clearly thought they were doing the right thing and two years is a long time to spend in prison, especially when you’re as young as they are. That said, the sentence, while severe, is not really surprising. In California, the recommended penalties for vandalism can be anywhere from one to three years. A two-year sentence—especially for vandalism involving a beloved work of art—makes legal sense.
The effectiveness of the Just Stop Oil strategy also needs to be tested. Climate change is clearly a very important issue and efforts to draw attention to it are to be commended. That said, I think it’s undeniable that defacing beautiful works of art is a stupid way to do it.
Really, what message should the entire community take away from this? People love art. People like Van Gogh. He did not spoil the atmosphere. It seems pretty obvious that a casual observer—with limited knowledge of the group or the issues it cares about—was always left confused about what one thing had to do with another. The whole thing can rightly be seen as a high-risk, low-reward strategy.
These girls are not imprisoned, but they also have to rethink what exactly they are trying to achieve and how to achieve it.
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