What is worth more, art or life? Present the question to a sophomore fine arts class, or at a seminar on the visual arts, and it’s likely to elicit a keen discussion on the place and value of art in our lives. But when activists Phoebe Plummer and Anna Holland posed the same question to a crowd of stunned spectators in room 43 of the National Gallery in London, moments after throwing soup onto Van Gogh’s masterwork, Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers, their intentions were a little more straightforward. Plummer and Holland were not so much interested in a philosophical reflection on the value of art as they were in bringing about an epiphany for those watching—one which, had all things gone the way they hoped, might have culminated in a better public understanding of the climate crisis. That was the plan, at least, but the response at the National Gallery that afternoon was decidedly different. It was one of consternation, even outrage, not climate change contemplation.
