Climate activist targeting Degas sculpture sentenced to 18 months in prison
Climate activist Timothy Martin, who daubed paint on a vitrine protecting an Edgar Degas sculpture in 2023, was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week. Martin was convicted in April of conspiracy and damaging government property.
The news was first reported in news & observeris a newspaper based in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Martin lives. In addition to the 18-month sentence, which will honor time served since he was convicted, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia ordered Martin to pay $4,062 in restitution and a $200 special assessment. He must also perform 150 hours of community service, 20 of which must be focused on graffiti cleanup.
In April 2023, Martin joined activist Johanna Smith in daubing paint on the Degas vitrine at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., as part of a “Declare a State of Emergency” protest with environmental groups. Glass cabinets are protecting Degas’s Little dancer, fourteen years oldone of the museum’s most famous sculptures.
“This is the work we have to do in order to wake up and grow and progress. Right now, we live in a fairy tale matrix created by the American empire,” Martin told reporters. news & observer earlier this year. “It’s really a call from the better self within us that was stolen from us and defeated from us.”
According to the Justice Department, Martin and Smith caused more than $4,000 in damage, an act that caused the room where the work was displayed to be closed for 10 days for repairs. Prosecutors initially sought a five-year prison sentence for Martin. (Smith pleaded guilty in 2023, served 60 days in jail, and paid more than $7,000 in restitution and fines.) The two were banned from Washington, D.C., and the city’s museums and monuments.
California-based nonprofit Climate Rights International said in a statement, “Climate activist Timothy Martin’s 18-month prison sentence for peacefully protesting at the National Gallery of Art is a grossly disproportionate sentence that undermines the United States’ obligation to protect the rights to free speech and peaceful assembly.”
