On the day the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that humanity was on the verge of missing the climate targets of plus 1.5 degrees or two degrees, Vienna’s Leopold Museum addressed the public with the “A Few Degrees More” campaign . In order to illustrate how much effect a few degrees can have, 15 landscape paintings were deliberately placed at an angle.
In cooperation with the climate research network Climate Change Center Austria (CCCA), the images were tilted by exactly the degree by which the temperature in the areas shown could rise if far-reaching countermeasures are not taken in good time. “A Few Degrees More (Will Turn the World into an Uncomfortable Place)” wants to use the landscapes painted by Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Egon Schiele, Gustave Courbet or Tina Blau, such as the Attersee region, the foothills of the Alps or the Atlantic coast, to show that soon everything could get out of hand. Natural landscapes immortalized more than a hundred years ago may soon be gone in their familiar form. Additional texts should explain the action and call for measures to be taken against these developments.
In November, climate activists from the group “Last Generation” poured black paint on the protective glass in front of Gustav Klimt’s painting “Death and Life”. At the time, Leopold Museum Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger declared the concerns of the climate activists to be justified, but said: “The attack on works of art is definitely the wrong way.” Now the museum itself has taken a different path: “With A Few Degrees More, we want to proactively make a constructive contribution in the hope that other museums and galleries will join this movement by carefully interfering with their art and cultural treasures become climate ambassadors,” Wipplinger said in a broadcast.
“Museums per se play a sustainable role in society by preserving and conveying cultural heritage for future generations. They see themselves as spaces of inspiration and reflection on our existence and have the potential to make our future actions more social by raising awareness Influencing phenomena positively. In this sense, we declare our solidarity with the efforts of the climate movement,” the museum director continued. Dealing with society’s most pressing problems is “a central concern of the Leopold Museum as an educational and mediation institution”.
For CCCA board member and climate researcher Helga Kromp-Kolb, the campaign is a successful attempt to make abstract data intuitively understandable: “For decades, scientists have been warning of a human-caused global temperature rise of more than 1.5 degrees with enormous consequences for the Humanity. But this data is elusive. We want to show what a difference a few more degrees can make.”
The intervention can be seen from Wednesday to June 26 as part of the exhibition “Vienna 1900. The dawn of modernity” in the Leopold Museum. In addition, free special tours are offered every Sunday at 2 p.m. and free school tours are also available by prior arrangement. The program “KulturMontag” on ORF 2 will bring a report about the campaign tonight.
(S E R V I C E – www.leopoldmuseum.org www.afewdegreesmore.com , )