Two environmentalists have been sentenced to two years in prison for throwing a can of tomato soup at Vincent Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” painting.
In October 2022, Phoebe Plummer, then 21, and Anna Holland, then 20, entered the National Gallery in London and began dipping the famous work in soup. Two activists affiliated with the Stop Oil group then glued themselves to the wall next to the painting and used the ensuing social media spectacle to spread their concerns about climate change to the world. The two activists were sentenced at London’s Southwark Crown Court on Friday for causing an estimated £10,000 of damage to the painting’s frame, The Guardian reported.
In a statement released the day of the sentencing, Just Stop Oil noted, “Plummer and Holland knew that when they threw the orange-red letter, the painting was protected from the soup by a solid piece of glass. The impact left a Pollock-esque splatter on it. Relatedly, Van Gogh’s painting was not damaged by the incident.
“My choice today is to smile and accept whatever sentence I receive, knowing that I have found peace in doing everything I can to prevent the suffering and death of millions of innocent people. I am doing my best to Find peace in acting with conscience,” Plummer said in a statement.
At the same time, Holland said: “We do not expect justice from a broken system corrupted by reliance on fossil fuels. Prison sentences, no matter how long, will not stop us.
It’s easy to sympathize with these girls. They obviously thought they did the right thing, and two years is a long time to spend in prison, especially when you’re as young as they were. That said, the verdict, while harsh, is certainly not surprising. In California, the recommended penalty for felony vandalism can be one to three years. A two-year sentence—especially for an act of vandalism involving a beloved piece 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 topic and the efforts to bring attention to it are to be commended. That said, I think there’s no question that defacing a great work of art is a foolish thing to do.
In fact, what information should the public get from it? People like art. People like Van Gogh. he Didn’t ruin the atmosphere. It is obvious that the casual observer—someone with limited knowledge of the group or its concerns—is bound to be confused by how one thing relates to another. The whole thing can be aptly described as a high-risk, low-return strategy.
These girls don’t belong in prison, but they may, too, need to rethink what exactly they want to achieve and how to achieve it.
