If Assange Dies, So Will a Picasso, a Rembrandt and a Warhol

Russian artist Andrei Molodkin solicited donations of artworks to hold hostage on behalf of activist Julian Assange, who has been confined to London's HM Prison Belmarsh since 2019.

Forty million U.S. dollars worth of art by Picasso, Rembrandt, Warhol and others will be chemically disintegrated if Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, dies before gaining his freedom.

At least that's what Russian artist and activist Andrei Molodkin vows will happen if Assange dies in prison, according to an article by Nadia Beard that was published by The New Yorker this month.

Called Dead Man's Switch, Molodkin's project solicited donations of art works from collectors sympathetic to the plight of Assange, who is jailed in London fighting extradition to the U.S. on charges related to leaks of top secret government documents in 2010.

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The works are being held in a safe on the grounds of a nineteenth-century sanatorium in a small town in southwest France. If Assange dies, they will be destroyed by remote activation of chemical agents. If he is released unharmed, the works will be returned to their owners.

Giampaolo Abbondio, an Italian fund manager and art collector who donated a Picasso to the project, told the magazine that he was willing to put the work at risk 'because it's less to do with Picasso than the idea'.

Others are not so sure about the merits of using art as a lever to try and force a desired legal outcome.

'Whether that is an artistic act in itself, I think, is questionable,' Pierre d'Alancaisez, a London-based curator and critic, told Beard for The New Yorker.

In a letter outlining his plan to U.S. authorities, Molodkin said, 'I do not want this and you possess the power to prevent it.'

So far, the U.S. State Department and the White House have ignored Molodkin's demands. —[O]