JSO’s response describes the art vandals in heroic terms as “action takers” and “members of the public” that, implicitly, represent Britain’s silent majority. We are perhaps to assume that the kind of Middle Englanders who bring their kids up to town for a rare trip to a big museum have taken to vandalising the paintings when they do so. These heroes are, we learn, “unafraid to use the cultural power of their national institutions when those institutions fail to do so”. Or, in other words, they desire to commandeer institutions whose founding ideal was — however partially and problematically — universal good, in service to their specific ideological project.

The note itself promises “We’ll leave the soup at home” but conspicuously does not undertake to stop committing acts of vandalism. JSO declares only that the group has “some ideas” on how the National Gallery can “mitigate” its failure to behave, and think, in precisely the manner the group dictates. The overall tone is unmistakably that of a pirate or protection racketeer: nice art collection you have there, shame if something happened to it.

But this is obviously incompatible with an ideal of universal access which relies on high levels of civic trust. Never mind the supposed “woke capture” of cultural institutions; ideological piracy such as Just Stop Oil is now attempting can only result in the collapse of that ideal.

Should it succeed, it would inevitably result in other fringe groups attempting the same manoeuvre. Modern Britain is awash with ideological fringe groups, many of which have mutually contradictory aims. Very obviously, then, public art galleries cannot accede to every one of the ideological programmes that might threaten to vandalise public exhibitions if not obeyed. So the gallery has no option but to try and maintain at least a formal neutrality, in the interests of its founding mission. And this in turn means the would-be ideological pirates have no option but either to give up or keep attacking.

Given their zealotry, as the NMDC points out, the principal effect is less likely to be the National Gallery adopting climate alarmism à la JSO, than the demise of the gallery’s enabling social norm of trust in visitors’ orderly behaviour and respect for the exhibits. And since JSO’s response, this race to the bottom has already escalated. Shortly after JSO’s letter, the National Gallery announced new security measures banning visitors from bringing in liquids — a significant decline in the level of implicit trust placed in those who come to view the art.

Will one side or the other back down? This seems implausible, given their competing missions and ideological commitments. And if this is so, the endpoint of declining trust in the norms of public art appreciation is no more public art, and a narrowing of access to the world’s treasures to a pre-vetted elite. It is difficult to see how this would help prevent the extraction of fossil fuels.

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Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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