Museum director Hans-Peter Wipplinger stands next to the tilted painting At the Attersee by Gustav Klimt, on March 22, 2023, at the Leopold Museum in Vienna. A PHOTO AFP VIENNA - A Vienna museum where climate activists recently attacked the glass screen shielding a Gustav Klimt painting, has responded with an exhibit entitled A Few Degrees More' that tilts to draw attention to the need for action on climate change.
Activists from the group Last Generation smeared the screen in front of Klimt's Death and Life at the Leopold Museum in Vienna and glued their hands to it in November, calling for an end to drilling for oil.
The museum's artistic director Hans-Peter Wipplinger said on the opening day of its response: "We found this way to be absolutely the wrong one. A Few Degrees More Will Turn the World into an Uncomfortable Place ALSO READ: Exhibition is picture of success."
Visitors look at a painting by Gustav Klimt on March 22,2023 at the Leopold Museum in Vienna. PHOTO AFP It involves hanging 15 works by artists including Klimt and the Austrian great Egon Schiele at an angle, with texts calling attention to the effect that global warming of more than 1.5 C from pre-industrial levels would have on the landscapes depicted in them.
According to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, emissions must be halved by the mid- 2030s if the world is to have any chance of limiting the temperature rise to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels - a key target enshrined in the 2015 Paris Agreement.
We wanted to initiate something productive, something communicative. That means conveying a message and not just in spectacular images, such as the protest, but by helping visitors learn about the situation and the various contexts of global heating, Wipplinger said.