US climate activist gets 18-month prison sentence for splashing paint on Degas sculpture’s case – The Art Newspaper

Timothy Martin—an architect based in North Carolina and one of two climate protesters who splashed paint on the display case and base of Edgar Degas’s La petite danseuse de quatorze ans (Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, 1880) at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, DC, in 2023—has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. His sentencing, earlier this week, came after a federal jury found him guilty of conspiracy to commit an offense against the US and injury to an NGA exhibit in April.

The judge in Martin’s case gave him credit for time already served, stating he should be released in a year, according to The Guardian. He was ordered to pay $4,250, complete 150 hours of community service (20 of which must be spent cleaning graffiti) and serve two years’ probation. Prosecutors had sought a prison sentence of five years.

On 27 April 2023, Martin and another affiliate of the environmental activism group Declare Emergency, Joanna Smith, smeared red and black paint on the case that holds the Degas sculpture and its base. Though their action did not affect the sculpture itself, it caused $4,000 in damage, according to the NGA, and required the Degas to be taken off display for ten days. Smith previously pleaded guilty to “causing injury” to the exhibit and has served a 60-day prison term; she was also sentenced to 24 months of supervised release and ordered to pay more than $7,000 in restitution and fines.

“When I was asked to do this action, it was a no-brainer,” Martin told Climate Rights International earlier this year. “I come from an art background and the little dancer is so, so beautiful and she represents the children of the world that are under major threat because of the climate emergency. So I could not resist the opportunity to turn her beautiful, vulnerable, symbolic self into a message [against] fossil fuel.”

Martin’s lawyer submitted character-witness letters to the court, including one from a fellow North Carolina-based architect, Frank Harmon, who according to The Raleigh News & Observer wrote that Martin “was, and is, a helper, not a destroyer”. Harmon added: “While he remains in jail, awaiting sentencing, he has continued to help others. As an artist as well as an architect, he sketches portraits at the request of fellow inmates to send to their families.”

The jury’s guilty verdict in Martin’s case came shortly after US president Donald Trump signed an executive order clamping down on protests and acts of alleged vandalism in Washington, DC. In the order on 28 March, Trump urged federal and district officials to make the US capital “safe and beautiful”, promising to “deploy a more robust federal law-enforcement presence” in combating “graffiti and other vandalism, unpermitted disturbances and demonstrations”.