RED HANDED

Climate Protester Pleads Guilty to Smearing Paint on Degas Sculpture Case

Fellow climate activist Tim Martin declined a plea deal.

Joanna Smith, one of the two climate activists charged with defacing the glass protecting a Edgar Degas sculpture with paint in a show of climate activism at the National Gallery of Art, pleaded guilty on Friday, The Washington Post reported. The damage to the case containing 1881 “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” sculpture cost $2,400, federal authorities said. Smith’s fellow activist Tim Martin declined a plea deal. She is set to be sentenced in April. “As we have made clear from the beginning, Joanna has a deep respect and appreciation for the arts and had absolutely no intention whatsoever of causing harm to the Degas sculpture,” her attorney said in a statement.