Extinction Rebellion disrupts Frans Hals exhibit opening at Rijksmuseum over ING sponsor
Extinction Rebellion (XR) interrupted the opening of the Rijksmuseum’s first Frans Hals exhibit on Friday to protest against ING as one of the museum’s main sponsors. Activists posed next to the paintings in the exhibit with AI replicas showing the masterworks, but with the climate disasters that await if global warming isn’t limited.
XR’s version of Johannes Vermeer’s Het straatje, for example, shows the Delft street Vermeer painted, but under half a meter of water. A couple painted by Frans Hals poses to a background of fires, a refugee camp, and other disaster-related items. Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s Het drijvende veertje is completely unrecognizable without the pelican and other birds, because they all face extinction.
“This is pretty much what awaits us,” XR spokesperson Let de Jong told Parool. “It cannot the be the case that the Rijksmuseum invests more than 3 million euros in the preservation of Het Nachtwacht and at the same time accepts money from a sponsor who makes a livable future impossible.”
Extinction Rebellion has been protesting against ING and its investments in the fossil industry for some time, including with multiple highway blockades on the A10 in Amsterdam. The climate action group calls the Dutch bank “the largest financier of fossil fuels” and demands that the Rijksmuseum stops its sponsorship relationship with ING.
“Fossil companies sponsor, for example, the KNVB and the Concertgebouw because they benefit from the warm feelings that these types of institutions evoke. They are thus ruining their good name. The Rijksmuseum allows itself to be abused,” De Jong told the newspaper.
In a press release, XR called the protest non-violent and “art-friendly.” In previous climate protests, activists have glued themselves to museum walls and pelted paintings with soup.
