Conspiracy theorist takes 9/11 angst out on classic 1830 painting
A WOMAN has been arrested after defacing a famous painting at the Louvre satellite museum in Lens.
The 28-year-old told police she scrawled ‘‘AE911’’ with an indelible marker on Liberty Leading the People, by Eugene Delacroix, to draw attention to an organisation that appears to believe the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy.
Yesterday, after an art expert was dispatched from Paris to examine the painting, which was completed in 1830 to celebrate the July 1830 revolution, a museum official said it had been cleaned and had suffered no lasting damage.
The 30cm graffiti tag had been removed from the lower right of the canvas without damaging the work, the official said.
‘‘ The painting remains intact. The inscription was superficial; it was on the surface of the varnish and hadn’t reached the paint layer.’’
The cleaning operation took two hours and was done with the painting still on the gallery wall. The wing of the gallery that was closed for the emergency restoration was expected to reopen today.
Delacroix’s work shows a bare-breasted woman personifying Liberty brandishing a French tricolour in one hand and a bayonetted musket in the other, leading the people forward over the bodies of the fallen.
Philippe Peyroux, the local prosecutor, said the woman was being held by police and appeared to be ‘‘unstable’’. He had requested that she be examined by a psychiatrist. He said she had a ‘‘Frenchsounding name’’, but her reasons for vandalising the painting were not clear.
‘‘Is this a person who acted under the influence of some kind of frenzy, or is it some kind of demand? We are waiting until we are able to find out a little more about this person.’’
The organisation ae911truth.org has an online petition, signed by more than 16,400 people, calling on the United States Congress to open an independent inquiry into the attacks on September 11, 2001. It rejects the idea that Islamists flew two planes into the World Trade Center.
The Louvre branch opened in the former mining town Lens in December.