Dear Climate Activists,
First I will start with the positive. I respect your concern for the environment and I also care deeply about the threat of climate change. I am dismayed by the lack of action worldwide to take steps to slow or prevent climate change disasters. This is an area where we share common ground.
I am writing this as an art professional and someone who loves art because I fundamentally disagree with your tactics of vandalizing art to draw attention to your cause. Not only do I condemn these actions on a philosophical level, I think they bring great harm to your own goals and only serve to increase resentment of your organization and platform in the general population.
I recognize that you feel increasingly desperate about the ticking clock of time we have to make substantial changes to slow climate change, and that you feel you have no other options than to be increasingly extreme in how you attract attention to your cause. This is not true.
The art is innocent. Many of the paintings you have attacked were created long before the start of the Industrial Revolution. They bear no guilt in climate change, and they should not be punished for it.
Would you take a hammer to a tree to raise awareness for your cause? There is no difference between that and attacking a painting. The beautiful and sacred deserves our protection, both in nature and art born of human creativity.
There is a twisted brokenness in the logic that you must harm beauty in the name of a greater good. That pathway leads to very bad places, both historically (see the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas) and in the future.
You have a chance now to stop these tactics and begin a better path.
My suggestion? Make new art rather than destroy existing art. Stage an exhibition of art highlighting the dangers of climate change, work with artists to document the beauty of vanishing species, channel your passion and energy into changing minds through compelling graphic design.
Art is one of the most powerful tools for reaching people’s hearts. Rather than attack it, allow art to help you convince others that the world is so beautiful they should care about saving it.
