The two climate activists who stained paint on “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” (1878-1881) by Edgar Degas at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, earlier this spring were indicted. Timothy Martin and Joanna Smith were taken into custody on Friday May 27 and charged with conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States and harming an exhibit at the National Gallery. The federal charges carry penalties of up to $250,000 in fines and five years in prison.
The 53-year-old activists surrendered on Friday morning when the charge was unsealed by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
At around 11 a.m. on April 27, Martin and Smith entered the National Gallery with water bottles filled with paint and covered the Plexiglas display case and wooden plinth of the “Fourteen year old dancer” with red and black pigment. The climate advocacy group Declare the emergency took responsibility for the action.
Martin and Smith announced their motives as they sat in front of the famous sculpture. “We need our leaders to take serious action, to tell us the truth about what is happening with the climate,” they said. “Our first job is to protect our children and our future children.” A video of the incident was captured by Washington Post journalists, who were alerted to the action to come. Martin can be seen banging the plexiglass case as he uses his hands to distribute the black paint.
The police arrested Martin and Smith. The museum closed the exhibit gallery for the rest of the day and removed “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” from view.
National Gallery communications chief Anabeth Guthrie said Hyperallergic that although no damage to Degas’ sculpture was visible to the naked eye, the famous work did in fact sustain injuries. Guthrie explained that the vibrations from the blows on the plexiglass and the subsequent movement of the sculpture from the gallery caused microscopic and cumulative damage.
“‘Little Dancer Aged Fourteen’ is an inherently fragile figure,” Guthrie said, adding that the work’s intricate composition (wood, clay, rope, brushes, stuffing material and wire, assembled on a lead armature and covered with a thin skin of beeswax) makes it “particularly vulnerable”.
“Going forward, ‘Little Dancer Aged Fourteen’ will require regular and thorough monitoring for any changes in cracks or other elements of its composition,” Guthrie said. The National Gallery put the sculpture back on display on May 8.
The indictment says damages amounted to $2,400. The date of Martin and Smith’s trial does not appear publicly available. Declare emergency did not respond to Hyperallergicimmediate request for comments.
Activists have at times been harshly punished following last year’s barrage of climate actions involving historic art treasures. Two protesters who targeted ‘Johannes Vermeer’a girl with an earring(1665) in the Netherlands were sentenced to two months in prison in November. Last month, the Italian Minister of Culture propose a new law imposing five-figure fines for cultural vandalism. However, the threat of legal action did not end the protests: last week protesters paid charcoal in Rome’s Trevi Fountain to dye it black.
