London's National Gallery director has called the Just Stop Oil protests that targeted paintings in his museum "a sad thing", saying the campaign was misguided. Gabriele Finaldi, who has led the gallery since 2015, made the remarks in a new profile in The Telegraph, looking back at three high-profile actions at the museum between 2022 and 2024.

Finaldi argued that the activists picked paintings because attacking art guarantees front-page coverage around the world, in a way that breaking an insurance company's windows would not. The pictures, he said, were not guilty. He added that people may have legitimate reasons to promote a cause, but they should not bring it to the National Gallery.

Two van Gogh paintings had liquids thrown at them, including the 2022 soup attack on Sunflowers, after which the two protesters glued themselves to the work, and the display case of a Velazquez was struck with hammers. The Sunflowers protest caused roughly 10,000 pounds of damage, mostly to the frame, and the two activists later received prison sentences. The paintings themselves escaped lasting harm.

Just Stop Oil formally wound down its protests in 2025, after the UK adopted a new climate policy. But the tactic spread: other activist groups staged similar demonstrations at venues ranging from the National Gallery of Art in Washington to the Louvre in Paris.

The Telegraph profile also drew Finaldi into the National Gallery's long-running tension with the Tate network. A longstanding arrangement has kept the National Gallery's displays largely to art made before 1900, leaving modern and contemporary work to Tate. With the gallery now planning an expansion that would include space for art made after 1900, Finaldi has pushed to loosen that division, noting that the 20th century is already present in the collection and that the two institutions tell the national story in different ways.