2025-01-12
Wildfires in California explain the recent climate-art protests
Remember the outrage and confusion when climate protesters threw soup on works of art by Van Gogh and others? A better framing of those protests is this: All of human culture, human heritage is on the line. All of it. In the medium to long-term human civilization as we have known it will end. It cannot survive as it has because the scale of it, as it has been thus far, is too much to be sustained in a future of drastically destabilized climate.
These wildfires are just a first glimpse of the early days of the climate emergency. The destruction of art, culture and our heritage is already happening around the planet where it is not protected by hardened infrastructure such as the Getty Villa museum. The alarms are all around us now and have been for some time. We have ensured the worst case scenarios.
Grounds of Getty Museum in LA Catch Fire
"IN THE LINE OF FIRE. The grounds of the Getty Villa museum caught fire Tuesday as a fast-moving blaze continues to engulf the Pacific Palisades neighborhood in western Los Angeles, forcing thousands to evacuate as many lost their homes, reports Alex Greenberger for ARTnews. The museum building and staff were not harmed, and it helped that it was closed to the public on Tuesday. "Irrigation was immediately deployed throughout the grounds Tuesday morning," a museum statement said, and its "galleries and library archives were sealed off from smoke by state-of-the-art air handling systems. The double-walled construction of the galleries also provides significant protection for the collections." The museum houses over 44,000 objects, including Roman, Greek, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD, and it's one of two Getty venues in the city"
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