A local weather activist who smeared paint on the glass defending an Edgar Degas sculpture within the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in Washington, D.C., has been discovered responsible by a federal jury of conspiracy to commit an offense in opposition to america.
The US Division of Justice introduced immediately that Timothy Martin, 55, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was additionally discovered responsible of harm to a Nationwide Gallery of Artwork exhibit, in regards to the April 2023 incident wherein he and a fellow activist, with the environmentalist group Declare Emergency, focused the case and base of Edgar Degas’s Little Dancer, Age Fourteen, one of the well-known sculptures within the Western artwork canon and a serious vacationer draw for the establishment.
Per the DOJ, Martin and his companion, Johanna Smith, brought on greater than $4,000 in harm, and compelled the exhibit to shut from public view for 10 days of repairs. Smith pleaded responsible in December 2023 to at least one rely of inflicting harm to the gallery’s exhibit and was sentenced to 60 days in jail, adopted by 24 months of supervised launch, and ordered to pay a $3,000 positive and $4,062 in restitution.
Since taking workplace, President Trump has escalated penalties for activism that entails bringing consciousness to the local weather disaster by way of concentrating on artworks. A March 2025 directive, titled Govt Order to Make D.C. Protected and Stunning, issued broad directives to rectify what the Trump administration has deemed problems with crime and aesthetics within the US capital, together with the restoration of monuments, eradicating graffiti from public areas, and the creation of the D.C. Protected and Stunning Activity Drive, nominally charged with coordinating “regulation enforcement efforts.”
