Gustav Klimt's painting Life and Death is shown unharmed beneath a glass cover after activists from Last Generation Austria splashed oil on it in Vienna's Leopold museum on November 15. Members of the group tweeted that they chose the 1915 picture to protest their government's use of fossil fuels. (The Associated Press/Letzte Generation Oesterreich)

Gustav Klimt painting targeted by climate activists in Vienna

Letzte Generation (Last Generation) attack "Death and Life" (1915) by Gustav Klimt to protest Austria's use of fossil fuels. On Tuesday, climate activists in Austria sprayed a famous painting by artist Gustav Klimt with a dark, greasy liquid before gluing themselves to glass covering the picture's frame. Last Generation Austria members tweeted that they had targeted…

November 16, 2022

Letzte Generation protesters in front of the potato-splashed Monet painting. COURTESY LETZTE GENERATION

Visual Arts News

Climate activists target a $110 million Monet painting with mashed potatoes.

On Sunday, mashed potatoes were thrown at a Claude Monet painting by climate protesters, temporarily covering it in starch. This was the most recent in a string of artistic interventions designed to raise awareness of environmental degradation and climate change. Hasso Plattner paid $110.7 million for the Meules, an 1890s artwork, at auction in 2019. It…

October 24, 2022

Kingston Creative, Kingston, Jamaica. Courtesy of Kingston Creative.

Visual Arts Events

New co-commissioning initiative on climate change presented by Alserkal Advisory

October 17, 2022–December 31, 2023 A Feral Commons, a new co-commissioning arts project bringing together cultural districts from the Global Cultural Districts Network (GCDN) across four continents and each presenting a public art installation in response to the theme of climate change, has been announced by Dubai-based Alserkal Advisory. The first cycle of the co-commission series…

October 19, 2022

Visual Arts Events

Beijing Art and Technology Biennale presents inaugural edition Synthetic Ecology

September 22, 2022–January 31, 2023 From September 22, 2022, through January 31, 2023, 798CUBE will host the first Beijing Art and Technology Biennale (BATB). This first edition's theme is Synthetic Ecology, and it will be directed by Xiewei Song and Hera Lee, with Xiaowen Chen and Naiyi Wang serving as curators. Ecological deterioration, climate change, global…

September 29, 2022

Courtesy of Lisbon Architecture Triennale.

Architecture & Design Events

Lisbon Architecture Triennale presents 2022 edition Terra

September 29–December 5, 2022 Opening days of Terra: September 29–October 1 On September 29, we will touch down on Terra, the outcome of a three-year global exploration effort by local communities to accept planet Earth as our shared home. How do different scales of resource depletion, socioeconomic inequality, and climate change actions interact? This edition is a call to…

September 14, 2022

Hira Nabi, All That Perishes at the Edge of Land (still), 2019. Film, colour, sound, 30 minutes. Courtesy of the artist. © Hira Nabi.

Visual Arts Events Museums

Museum Tinguely, Basel presents Territories of Waste

September 14, 2022–January 8, 2023 Along with climate change and mass extinction, the growth of environmental toxins has once again been a focus of artistic activity as a result of the current planetary catastrophe. Territories of Waste, a group exhibition at Museum Tinguely, focuses on this contemporary artistic engagement and inquires as to where such dialogues…

September 13, 2022

Joan Jonas, Wolf Lights, 2004–2005. © Joan Jonas/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022.

Performing Arts Events Museums Visual Arts Events

Haus der Kunst presents Joan Jonas

Haus der Kunst in Munich presents the most comprehensive solo exhibition of the internationally renowned artist Joan Jonas (b. 1936, New York) in Germany to date.

September 9, 2022

A video grab from a footage made available by environmental activists, shows two members of Ultima Generazione, or Last Generation in English, glued their hands on the Roman statue of Laocoön and His Sons, one of the masterpieces of the Vatican Museums collection, to protest against climate change, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2022. The activists displayed a banner reading, "Last Generation No Gas No Coal" urging politicians to listen to the call from the scientific community and act against climate change. (Ultima Generazione Via AP)

Visual Arts News

Climate protesters glued themselves to the Vatican’s Laocoon statue

Italian environmental activists staged a second museum protest in as many months, gluing their hands Thursday to the base of one of the Vatican Museums’ most important ancient sculptures, the Laocoon.

August 19, 2022

Oliver Ressler, We are all learning about nature’s circulatory systems by poisoning them, 2020. Digital print on dibond behind museums glass, framed, 102 x 68 cm.

Visual Arts Events Galleries

Tallinn Art Hall presents Oliver Ressler: Barricading the Ice Sheets

August 27–November 6, 2022 What parts do artists and art professionals play in the campaigns for climate justice? Barricading the Ice Sheets (2019–2022) by artist Oliver Ressler is on display at Tallinn Art Hall for the first time in Estonia and gives important insight on these movements throughout Europe and beyond. Corina L. Apostol, who has…

August 4, 2022

Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grainytė, Lina Lapelytė, Sun & Sea, 2019. © the artists. Photo: Andrej Vasilenko.

Performing Arts Events Visual Arts Events

Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma presents Sun & Sea for ARS22—Living Encounters

August 10–28, 2022 The major exhibition ARS22—Living Encounters at the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma brings an intense collection of 15 performances from the museum's regular live art program outside of the Kiasma Theatre and into the galleries. The final event of ARS22 is the Lithuanian opera production Sun & Sea in August 2022. The immersive…

August 3, 2022