Artwashing Wonderful™️ Climate Criminals
I posted this video on Twitter earlier but I want to share a few more clips from a protest we did this weekend. Evgenia and I ambushed this year’s LACMA Gala, hoping to educate Hollywood celebrities walking the red carpet about two major climate criminals hiding out in the midst: Stewart and Lynda Resnick. They’re Beverly Hills billionaires. They own the Wonderful Company, the largest farm in America. They are destroying what’s left of natural life in California to fuel their pistachio empire.
Why the Resnicks? They are among the main donors to LACMA, a biggest and most important art museum in Los Angeles. They gave $42 million to have their name put on a building and gave another roughly $10 million to “donated” art.
They’re using LA’s art world to launder their reputation — to make themselves out to be something other than what they really are: rapacious billionaires obsessed with expanding their pistachio empire at the expense of rivers and fish and the life that they sustain. I don’t think most people are aware of the depth of the ecological crisis that California is in right now. Most of the state’s rivers are effectively lifeless. A mass extinction is in process — largely because of farmers like the Resnicks. Dozens of fish species, birds, and even orcas are all under threat.1
This year’s LACMA honored the director David Fincher and the event was chaired by Leonardo DiCaprio, one of Hollywood’s biggest environmentalists. We wanted to let him know about what kind of people LACMA is helping protect and the kind of people that he’s lending his name and rep to.
Security wasn’t too thrilled that we were there and did their best to keep us away from the red carpet. They had a dog and eventually called the cops. But we did hear that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck stopped to check us out. So…a minor victory!
—Yasha Levine
PS: Thanks to Kadri Koop for filming the protest.
Want to know more? Learn more about Pistachio Wars, an upcoming documentary about oligarchs and water directed by Rowan Wernham and me. And check out pistachiowars.com.
Brilliant! Glad you called Di Caprio out considering he calls himself an environmentalist.
"Artwashing!" Bravo!
I have the worms, let's compose the rich!