The heiress to a billion dollar oil company's riches, Aileen Getty, is funding the radical climate change group Just Stop Oil through the Climate Emergency Fund (CEF).
According to the Daily Mail, Getty has given over $1 million to CEF, who disperses the funds to groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. The latter group last week dispatched two activists to the National Gallery in London where they threw cans of tomato soup on Van Gogh’s Sunflower painting before supergluing their hands to the wall next to the piece.
65-year-old Getty lives in the United States and CEF is an American-based non-profit that claims on their website to "support the brave activists waking up the public to the climate emergency."
Just Stop Oil is a UK-based group that, on their website, says "We demand that the UK government makes a statement that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development, and production of fossil fuels in the UK."
Aileen Getty's grandfather J Paul Getty made his fortune as an oil tycoon.
One British Member of Parliament said that Getty is one of a few "foreign millionaires" that get these eco-radicals to "do their dirty work without any intention of coming out of the shadows and exposing themselves to democratic accountability."
When Just Stop Oil threw the soup, one of the activists asked the room "what is worth more, art or life? Is it worth more than food? Worth more than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of the painting, or the protection of our planet and people?"
"The cost of living crisis is part of the cost of the oil crisis. Fuel is unaffordable to millions of cold, hungry families. They can’t even afford to heat a tin of soup," she continued, holding up a can of the soup poured on the painting.
"Meanwhile, crops are failing," she added, as security began to intervene. "Millions of people are dying in monsoons, wildfires, and severe drought. We cannot afford new oil and gas."
This act is just the most recent in a string of vandalism perpetrated by Just Stop Oil, as well as Ultima Generazione, in the UK and Italy.
According to ARTnews, Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to Horatio McCulloch’s My Heart’s in the Highlands, painted in 1860, on June 29 at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow.
On June 30, activists from the group glued themselves to another Van Gogh work, Peach Trees in Blossom, painted in 1889, at the Courtauld Institute in London.
On July 1, activists glued themselves to J.M.W Turner’s Tomson’s Aeolian Harp, painted in 1809. The painting was being shown at the Manchester Art Gallery, with the activists also spray painting "no new oil" on the ground in front of the painting.
The group continued with these acts of vandalism on July 4, with John Constable’s The Hay Wain, held at the National Gallery, and on July 5, with Giampietrino’s The Last Supper.
In Italy, Ultima Generazione activists glued themselves on July 22 to Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera, painted in 1477, which is being shown at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
The Italian group continued on July 30, with Umberto Boccioni’s Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, on August 4, with Laocoon and His Sons, and on August 21, with protestors chaining themselves to the Scrovegni Chapel.
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