The National Gallery, the largest art gallery in the United Kingdom, will prohibit the entry of liquids starting this Fridaywith the exception of infant milk and prescription medications, as a security measure after the recent attacks on several of its works.
The London museum specified in a statement released this Thursday that the guideline will come into force at 9 a.m. this Friday, October 18, and has warned visitors of possible delays in security checks.
In its note, the institution recalls that, since July 2022, it has been the victim of five attacks on emblematic paintings such as ‘The Sunflowers’ by Vincent van Gogh, ‘The Haywagon’ by John Constable, ‘La Maternité’ by Picasso and ‘Venus in the Mirror’ by Velázquez.
These acts by mostly Palestinian rights or environmental activists, who have sometimes thrown tomato soup as part of their protest, caused “physical damage to the works, distress to visitors and staff.” according to the museum and altered its mission to “ensure that art is accessible for everyone to enjoy.”
The decision comes just a week after two activists pasted an image of a Palestinian woman and her bloodied child on Pablo Picasso’s painting ‘La Maternité’ with the intention of calling for an arms embargo on Israel, according to the organization they belong, Youth Demand.
In their protest action, carried out shortly before noon, the activists pasted the photograph of a mother in Gaza with her son on the protective glass of the work that Picasso completed in 1901, before pouring red paint on the floor of the room 43 of the museum. A museum spokesperson then confirmed that no paintings had been damaged in the protest action.
Shortly before, at the end of September, three activists from the British environmental organization Just Stop Oil once again threw soup on two paintings by the Dutchman Vincent Van Gogh after two other activists from the NGO were convicted of vandalizing ‘The Sunflowers’ of the same way in October 2022.
The museum founded in 1824 defends that the measure is necessary to “ensure the safety of everyone and the nation’s collection of paintings.”
