Recently, multiple climate change activists went to museums or exhibitions and attempted to damage the pieces on display to draw attention to their cause.

These demonstrations have seen activists throw soup at Van Goghs’ Sunflower painting at the London National Gallery, glue themselves to a painting in the Uffizi art gallery in Italy, throw mashed potatoes at a Monet landscape in Germany and many more. 

The media at large and the Association of Art Museum Directors have called these demonstrations attacks on art and have deemed them misdirected and unjustified. But are they?

In my senior year of high school, I had a political science class where we discussed and debated current world events. I distinctly remember the one discussion that tore my class in half, discussing whether vandalizing art as a form of protest was justifiable. 

Since that class, I have had the exact same argument multiple times with many different people. Each time I find myself listening to the same opinions about the value of the art pieces, their irreplaceable nature and how the paintings are like living parts of history we need to protect. 

And while all those things are true, when we debate whether people should be gluing themselves to paintings or not, we are missing the point. The debate should not be centered around the paintings. It should be about what the protest was for. 

But more than that, we need to ask ourselves, why did the activists feel like they needed to go into museums and glue themselves to paintings for their protests to have an impact? Why did they believe this was the best way to bring attention to their cause?

Radical protests barely make international headlines, like when Wynn Bruce set himself on fire in front of the Supreme Court to call for more action on climate change. However, the attacks on famous artworks have almost every media outlet running stories and writing op-eds on the subject. You can see clearly which one gets more attention, therefore, gets more people talking about it.

It’s hard to acknowledge, but humanity at large seems to care more about what happens to a piece of cloth with colors and shapes on it than they do about a human life. And if that’s where our collective attention is and if that’s what’s going to make international headlines, why shouldn’t the protesters be targeting museum paintings?

The truth is climate activists are desperate to be heard because we are incredibly close to irreversible climate change that would lead to catastrophe. So they put their efforts to where they know people will listen.

I’m tired of having the same fight over and over again. I’m tired of having the same conversations around the dinner table with my family on whether this should be how they protest. 

When are we going to do something about the issues?

When something is as urgent as climate change, we should not be arguing about how protests are happening. We should be discussing the best ways to take action.

People are dying. The planet is dying. We are seeing more and more natural disasters and the temperature keeps rising.

So to the people who keep telling me that this is not the right way to protest inaction, I ask, how much will it matter that we preserved the Mona Lisa intact when there’s no one left to see it?