In Vienna, canvases askew for the climate

On Lake Attersee

,

... in Vienna, these masterpieces by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele have been hung askew since Wednesday March 22 to raise public awareness of climate change.

The famed Leopold Museum, a recent target of environmental activists, has tilted 15 canvases the number of degrees whose depicted landscapes could heat up in years to come if climate change runs out of control.

A disturbing vision, when usually these paintings are soothing.

“An increase in temperature of just a few degrees would promote algal blooms and gradually dry up the beautiful turquoise lake,”

reads, for example, next to the Attersee

.

For future generations to be able to admire this landscape as painted by the artist, warming must be limited to 1.5°C compared to the pre-industrial era, warns the museum, while experts from the IPCC have called this week to act radically to ensure "a livable future".

Seeing

in an unstable position is enough to make you sad and

for

, told AFP Sofie Skoven, a Danish student visiting with her class in the Austrian capital.

Read alsoClimate report: how does the IPCC work?

The project is named

by this institution housing, with its 6,000 pieces, one of the largest collections of Austrian art in the world, focusing on the second half of the 19th century and the modernism that followed. .

Through this initiative, director Hans-Peter Wipplinger explains

.

In response to activists

The concept was in fact imagined as a response to activists who in November sprayed a painting by Klimt - protected by glass - with a black liquid to denounce a partnership between the museum and the oil giant OMV.

A stunt that the museum manager had little appreciated, denouncing

.

It was necessary to multiply from the windows in front of the canvases, to reinforce the surveillance of the rooms and the controls at the entrance.

Read alsoCésar: Who are the activists who interrupted the ceremony?

He regrets the cost incurred, while insurance premiums have also increased, without it being possible to guarantee that such measures

another incident from occurring.

Visible until June and developed with a network of Austrian scientists devoting their research to the climate, the initiative was diversely received by visitors.

The look gets used to and in the end, it

, estimates Joachim Burdack, a 71-year-old German retiree.