WASHINGTON – Climate activists attacked a famous Edgar Degas sculpture in a Washington museum on Thursday, smearing its Plexiglas case with paint.

The French artist’s wax sculpture, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, was attacked with stripes of red and black paint, the National Gallery of Art reported.

The incident was among the first of its kind in North America.

The gallery said in a statement that the work “of inestimable value” was removed from the exhibition halls to assess possible damage.

“We categorically denounce this physical attack on one of our works of art,” the gallery said, adding that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was taking part in the probe.

Activists said the assault is about global warming.

“We need our leaders to take serious action to tell the truth about what is happening to the climate,” said an activist in her 50s sitting at the foot of the small statue, her hands covered in the red paint used on the glass and the base of the work of Degas, in a video published by The Washington Post.

“Today, through non-violent rebellion, we temporarily defiled a work of art to evoke the very real children whose suffering is certain if deadly fossil fuel companies continue to mine coal, oil and gas from the soil,” the group that claimed the action, Declare Emergency, wrote on Instagram.

It urged US President Joe Biden to declare a state of climate emergency.

The group is unknown to the public. It said one of its activists was detained but released by the authorities shortly afterwards.

Last autumn, mainly in Europe, environmental activists stepped up actions targeting works of art to seek more public awareness about global warming.

For example, they glued their hands to a painting by Francisco Goya in Madrid, threw tomato soup on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London and smeared mashed potatoes on a masterpiece by Claude Monet in Potsdam, near Berlin. AFP