The National Gallery in London is cracking down on liquids after recent protests targeting the museum’s works, including two van Gogh paintings “souped” by environmental activists last month and a Picasso piece that pro-Palestinian activists pasted a poster on and poured red paint near last week. (In both cases, the artworks were protected by glass and suffered no damage.)
In a statement on X, the National Gallery said no liquids would be allowed inside the museum starting today, October 18 — except for breast milk, baby formula, and medications — for the “safety of all who visit.”
The museum said the policy would mean longer wait times to enter the museum as they search bags and asked visitors to attend with “minimal items.”
A spokesperson for the National Gallery told Hyperallergic that the institution hopes to implement the new policy with limited disruption to visitors.
“We are sorry it is taking longer than usual to access the Gallery,” the spokesperson said. “We also apologize that visitors are, for the time being, not receiving the welcome we would very much like to extend to them, but we hope that they understand why it has been necessary for us to do this. ”
Last week, Wednesday, October 9, the group Youth Demand posted an image of a distressed Gazan mother holding a bloody child, taken by photojournalist Ali Jadallah, during an Israeli airstrike in March over Picasso’s “Motherhood (La Maternité)” (1901). As part of its appeal for the United Kingdom to impose an arms embargo on Israel, the group also poured red paint on the floor.
In the most recent “souping” incident, Just Stop Oil activists threw the liquid onto two glass-covered paintings from van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1887–1889) series. A pair of protesters affiliated with the environmental activist group first souped a van Gogh painting in 2022 and is now serving more than a year and a half in prison for their protest, which allegedly caused damages of £5,000 (~$6,700).
Days before the National Gallery announced its no-liquid policy, Youth Demand and Just Stop Oil responded to calls from the museum to put a stop to the “attacks,” which they said caused some visitors to “no longer feel safe” in the museum. In an open letter published on October 15, the organizations invited the National Museum Directors’ Council to meet at the National Gallery.
“People disrupt museum and gallery spaces to break the illusion that everything is fine,” the letter reads. “These are the actions of a public who are scared, angry, but unwilling to give up … [and] unafraid to use the cultural power of their national institutions when those institutions fail to do so.”
