On June 14, 2023, two women from the eco-extremist group Återställ Våtmarker (Restore Wetlands), raided the National Museum in Stockholm, Sweden. They attacked Le Jardin de l’artiste à Giverny (The artist’s garden at Giverny), a painting created in 1900 by the French Impressionist Claude Monet. The two vandals, a 28-year-old nurse and a 25-year-old nursing student, wore white T-shirts emblazoned…
One this day, June 17, 1775, American patriots fought the Battle of Bunker Hill in Massachusetts against the Red Coat troops of the British Empire. The battle took place during the Siege of Boston. To mark that occasion, allow me to direct you to the website of the Museum of the American Revolution, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its special exhibition,…
Photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s 1981 black and white photo of Prince was made just as the talented young singer-songwriter-musician was on his way to super stardom. Goldsmith’s portrait captured a moment in time with the genre-defying musician. She caught the soulfulness of the man on film. On May 18, 2023 the Supreme Court issued a momentous smackdown to the ghost of…
Funding is one activity that has sustained the acts of vandalism carried out against art museums by the UK group Just Stop Oil. That faction has received financial backing from the Climate Emergency Fund, a global network of “climate activists” headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. This was verified on Aug. 10, 2022 when the New York Times reported that the…
On May 24, 2023, the US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a Grand Jury indictment against two members of the American eco-extremist group “Declare Emergency.” Timothy Martin and Joanna Smith, both 53, were charged with “willfully” committing “an offense against the United States,” by injuring an object of art and an exhibit “within the National Gallery of…
Years ago I visited the Trevi Fountain in Rome, Italy. Built in the mid-1700s and located in the Piazza di Trevi square, it is a breathtaking structure bursting with history and glorious art. Like most tourists, I tossed a coin into the fountain pool… legend says those who do so will visit Rome again. I’m infuriated to get the news…
This essay will broach the subject of The Last Supper, a controversial artwork by photographer Elisabeth Ohlson. Deemed blasphemous by many, it was exhibited at the European Union Parliament in Brussels, Belgium in May of 2023. I will contrast Ohlson’s irreverent photo with a brief overview of how visual artists in the West have portrayed The Last Supper—the final meal…
In the continuing war on art, members of the eco-extremist group Declare Emergency, entered the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC on April 27, 2023, and attacked the famous sculpture by French artist Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. Two scalawags, a man and woman dressed in black, entered Gallery 3, the room that exhibits Little Dancer. The black…
