Events in Gaza are dividing the art world
Here is your update as of Feb 16 2024. I started this rolling document detailing art sector responses on Nov 16 2023.
This document is too long to read in an email and some information will be not be visible. Please tap on the title to read in your browser. This work takes a lot of time. I am am one person with a disability working on it. I welcome proposed additions, appreciate your patience regarding amendments and hope that you find the information of some value.
UPDATED FEB 15, 2024
Feb 15
Arts Council England (ACE) publish a statement following “feedback, on social media and directly, around the changes we made in January to our Relationship Framework.”
This, the second statement from ACE in 48 hours following updates to their Relationship Framework guidance, said in part:
We’ve heard that the language we used in our update was open to misinterpretation. In light of what we’ve heard this week, we’re looking again at some of the language we’ve used, and will clarify it to fully reflect our original intention.
Read the full updated statement here.
Feb 14
Arts Council England (ACE) publishes a statement regarding their Relationship Framework Policy updates
ACE’s statement was published to “clarify the reason for the changes.” Read the statement here
Social media users circulated ACE’s March 2022 A Statement on Ukraine.
Feb 13
Arts Council England (ACE) updates it’s guidelines, informing grant recipients that “overtly political or activist” activities could conflict with public funding agreements or opportunities
Arts Professional published the news on Feb 13:
Arts Council England (ACE) has told National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) and Investment Principles Support Organisations (IPSOs) to be wary of "overtly political or activist" statements made in a personal capacity by people linked with them as this might expose them to “reputational risk” and breach their funding agreements.
This update to ACE’s Relationship Framework policy on Jan 28, sets out how they intend to work with National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs) and Investment Principles Support Organisations (IPSOs) funded through their 2023-26 Investment and Transfer Programmes.
Feb 12
Protestors disrupt talk at The Jewish Museum, N.Y
A talk event featuring the museum Director James S. Snyder and Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky, whose exhibition 7 October 2023 depicts the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack and is according to Hyperallergic “void of a single depiction of Palestinians,” was disrupted, by self proclaimed anti-Zionist demonstrators. Read more here
Feb 10
Pro-Palestinian protesters gather at MoMA accusing the museum’s Board of Trustees of “funding genocide, apartheid” and “settler colonialism”
Protestors from Writers Against the War on Gaza and the New York chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement used mocked up museum guides to accuse MoMA’s board of trustees - Leon Black, Larry Fink, Paula Crown, Marie-Josée Kravis, and Ronald S. Lauder, of funding “genocide, apartheid” and “settler colonialism”. The protestors statement in the mocked up guide read:
While MoMA purports ideologies of ‘change’ and ‘creativity,’ the Board of Trustees directly fund Zionist occupation via arms manufacturing, lobbying, and corporate investment. At the same time, the museum derives its legitimacy from artists and cultural workers, including those actively engaged in anti-colonial struggle.
Museum security closed the doors for a short period during the sit-in. Read more here
Feb 10
Brooklyn Museum protest held by Within Our Lifetime Palestine
WOL protestors held signs demanding a ceasefire and honoring of the Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza since Hamas’s attack on October 7. Ten protestors were arrested.
The Feb 10 New York protests followed the release of this open letter from NYC Museum and Culture Workers in Support of Palestine.
Feb 9
Artists’ Union England share concern of their membership over Art Council England’s updated guidelines
On Feb 14 AUE wrote in a post on the social media platform X:
On 9th Feb, we wrote to Arts Council England (ACE) to share the concerns of our membership following the quiet introduction of new guidelines around reputational risk for National Portfolio Organisations (NPOs). We have requested a response and will keep our members updated.
View their letter here.
Feb 9
Artist Tania Bruguera talks on censorship of artists in Germany on The Week in Art podcast
Bruguera discusses the early closing of her Hamburger Bahnhof event in Berlin, plus the comments made by Ai Weiwei that censorship in the West was now “exactly the same” as in Mao’s China. Read comments on the the artists Instagram and the Hamburger Bahnhof Instagram accounts to view audience responses to the event and it’s early close and more here
Jan 30
Johanna Tagada Hoffbeck’s solo exhibition at a German museum is cancelled following the artists ‘Free Palestine' message
Read details and the exchanged letters regarding the exhibition cancellation, on Johanna’s instagram page here
Jan ‘24
Laurie Anderson withdraws from a guest professorship at Folkwang University of Arts in Essen
Folkwang University officials took issue with Anderson’s backing of this 2021 open letter which called for “an immediate and unconditional cessation of Israeli violence against Palestinians”. Read more here
Jan 26
Elias and Gideon Mendel write open letter after being removed from group exhibition at the Vienna Jewish Museum
Elias and Gideon Mendel were due to be part of the I am my Family. The Generations after the Holocaust exhibition, but were excluded because of their critical stance on the Israeli State. Read their open letter in response here
Jan 20
Seven artists withdraw work from a California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) MFA exhibition at the UTA Artist Space, after venue allegedly bans pro-Palestine statements
Artists Laura Ohio, Zoe Josephina Moon, malavika rao, GIAHN, Jungsub Eom, lauren mcavoy, and Ásgerður “Ása” Arnardóttir removed their pieces from display at the UTA Artist Space after they were allegedly being told that they could not address Palestine or Gaza in their artist statements. Read more here
Jan 15
The International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art said it is witnessing “unprecedented international censorship of artists and curators.”
CIMAM said in their statement:
We are witnessing unprecedented international censorship of artists and curators who have expressed their political views and support for the Palestinian people.
Read the statement here
Dec 27 ‘23
Eskenazi Museum of Art cancels survey of Palestinian artist Samia Halaby
The artists show Centers of Energy was scheduled to open at Eskenazi Museum of Art (EMA) on February 10. It would have been the first retrospective of the 87-year-old artist’s work in the U.S. The institution canceled the show citing “safety concerns” in light of the artist’s social media posts expressing support for Palestinian causes. Read more here
Jan 8
Artists protest in front of Berlin parliament, following the announcement from cultural senator stating that public funding for artists will depend on a loyalty oath for Israel.
Cultural senator, Joe Chialo of the CDU announced that artists and cultural institutions need to sign a loyalty oath for the State of Israel, distance themselves from “extremism” and support Israel’s “right to exist” to get public funding. More here
UPDATED JAN 7, 2024
Arnolfini in Bristol cancels Palestinian film festival events
The arts centre was to host a film screening and poetry evening as part of the Bristol Palestine Film Festival, but withdrew the offer.
An open letter criticising Arnolfini’s decision was signed by more than 2,300 cultural figures. In a statement, Arnolfini said that their decision to withdraw their offer to host was due to them being an arts charity and therefore their ability to engage in what could be “construed as political activity” was restricted. The proposed events were a screening of Farha (2021) and a poetry night headlined by the rapper and activist Lowkey. Farha is currently available on Netflix.
Artists including the actor Olivia Colman accuse cultural institutions of “repressing, silencing and stigmatising Palestinian voices and perspectives”.
The letter mentions Lisson Gallery’s cancellation of Ai Weiwei’s show, Folkwang Museum’s cancellation of Anais Duplan’s Afrofuturism exhibition and the Saarland Museum’s cancellation of Candice Brietz’s show (details can be found in earlier editions this document - scroll down).
Magnum Photo Agency workers “demand an end to the killing of journalists in Gaza and the wider region.”
“As members of the international journalism community, we call for an end to the killing of journalists and to any threats to media covering the Israeli bombardment in Gaza and Lebanon, and the escalating violence in the region. We call for the protection of all of our colleagues by all parties.” Read the full statement here.
The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) will review policies and work on "rebuilding of trust" after criticism over the departure of Indigenous curator Wanda Nanibush in Dec ‘23
Wanda Nanibush was the first curator of the Art Gallery of Ontario's Indigenous Art and co-lead of the gallery's Indigenous and Canadian Art Department. She has not publicly commented on her departure, but local news outlets stated that Nanibush’s support of Palestinian causes had caused friction among staff and supporters of the institution. An open letter was signed by artists and cultural workers in response to Nanibush’s “pushing out” of the gallery. A second and third letter followed. Read more here.
The AGO is currently showing the Tate Britain show Life Between Islands until April 2024. Artist Ada M. Patterson withdrew from the exhibition following Nanibush’s resignation. Read Patterson’s statement here.
Mona Chalabi charts BBC News coverage and more in data visualisations
Click on Mona Chalabi’s instagram to view her data visualisations on BBC neutrality, the U.S representatives who have invested in weapon manufacturers that are arming the Israel army (between 2020-2023) and graphics explaining the numbers of people that have been displaced from their homes in Gaza and more.
Hyperallergic publish The 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World: 2023 edition
Top of the list is Cultural heritage Artsakh, Tigray, Ukraine, Gaza. “From art galleries and mosques to residential buildings, civilian infrastructure and archaeological sites, the Israeli military has irreparably damaged art and cultural sites in Gaza over the past three months.”
Listed at number 5 are open letters “especially the anonymous ones.”
Eltiqa Gallery Gaza destroyed in air strike
Eltiqa was founded in Gaza City in 2002 by seven Palestinian artists with multidisciplinary practices. The group participated in Documenta 15 in 2022. They shared details of the damage on their Facebook page. Read more here.
Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish discusses the ‘Israeli strikes on Gaza, art and the role of poetry in times of war’ in The Guardian
The New York Review of Books describes Darwish as one of the “foremost contemporary Arab poets”, and his work has been translated into more than 20 languages. “Words, speech – that’s what’s being targeted” says Darwish.
“To be clear, I don’t see the Israeli regime as representative of the Jewish people. We should always differentiate between the Israeli colonial regime and the Jewish people of the world. It annoys me when I see [Benjamin] Netanyahu speaking in their name, like he’s representing them or cares about them. Obviously, he does not.” Read the article here
Protest planned to be held inside US Holocaust Museum cancelled
A group called Doctors Against Genocide planned to gather inside the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC on Dec 28 followed by a gathering outside the White House. The event was cancelled following public backlash.
Artist Zoë Buckman shared comment on the protest and the rise in anti-semitism, including at a recent event where she and the mother of Naama Levy, a hostage being held by Hamas, were in attendance. Listen to her experience and comment here.
The Walled Off Hotel, Bethlehem closes
The Walled Off Hotel, opened in the Occupied West Bank by Banksy in 2017 on the 100-year anniversary of Britain’s Balfour Declaration has closed. The hotel website states: “Due to major developments in the region we have with regret chosen to close the hotel for the time being. We will post updates here as the situation evolves.”
Artist Samera Abed “targeted for wearing my heritage clothing” at Art Basel, Miami
The artist wore an all-black outfit, face veil and jewelry as a gesture of mourning for Palestinian lives lost. Security informed Abed that the face coverings must be removed or she would be escorted from the fair.
Read more on the rise in Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism in the U.S since Oct 7, 2023 here.
UPDATED DEC 9
Saarland Museum’s Modern Gallery in Germany canceled the upcoming show of the Jewish South African-born artist Candice Breitz.
The cancelation followed Breitz’s comments online regarding “the inhumane and grotesque bombardment of Gaza.” Saarbrücker Zeitung reported that the Saarland Museum’s Modern Gallery had called off the show “in view of the media coverage about the artist in connection with her controversial statements in the context of Hamas’ war of aggression against the state of Israel.”
Candice had planned to show TLDR, a 2017 video installation focused on sex workers in Cape Town. Elke Buhr, editor of Monopol, wrote of the recent cancellations:
“It has long since ceased to be about art and its content, and there is no longer any talk of freedom of expression or freedom of art.”
Read Candice’s interview on the situation, in The Guardian here.
Hyperallergic’s recent video overview of the art censorship that has been happening.
Pro-Palestinian protesters rally at the Brooklyn Museum
On Dec 8 protestors affiliated with the organisations Decolonize This Place and Within Our Lifetime, demanded that the museum sever its ties with donors financially tied to Israel.
Activists call for ceasefire during outside Art Basel, Miami Beach
The South Florida Coalition for Palestine, members of Jewish Voice for Peace, and other Miami-based artists and cultural workers protested outside Art Basel Miami Beach on Dec 8. They were demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and calling on Miami-Dade County officials to stop supporting Israel. Read more about the protest here
Lévy Gorvy Dayan Gallery founders denounced the Artforum Gaza letter. Then their windows were pasted with fake apology letters
Pictures of the action were put on Instagram by the group Writers Against the War on Gaza, which denounced the firing of Artforum’s editor, after he published the letter signed by a group of artists, demanding that art institutions speak out on Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza. Dominique Lévy, Brett Gorvy, and Amalia Dayan wrote a statement in response to the original letter, stating: “We are distressed by the open letter recently posted on Artforum, which does not acknowledge the ongoing mass hostage emergency, the historical context, and the atrocities committed in Israel on October 7, 2023—the bloodiest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.’ Writers Against the War on Gaza then pasted fake apology letters from the founders, on their gallery windows. Read more here.
Diversify Photo members leave in protest of the groups silence on events in Gaza.
The collective who decided to leave Diversify Photo said:
“Journalism is not a commodity. Diversification is not a Silicon Valley buzzword. It is essential in how human conditions are recounted, how subjects are represented, and eventually, how audiences' understanding of the world is shaped. Diversify Photo has chosen to remain silent. And this makes it part of the very problem that sees journalism as a commodity to market.”
Read their full statement here.
German photo biennial cancelled after curator’s posts are deemed antisemitic
The Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, a contemporary photo exhibition which was due to be held in the German cities of Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg, in March 2024 has been cancelled. One of its curators posted content on social media that authorities described as antisemitic. Posts by Shahidul Alam, a Bangladeshi photo journalist and one of the events curators included a comparison of the current war in Gaza with the Holocaust and accusations of genocide by the state of Israel against the Palestinian population of Gaza. A statement by another of the curators, Munem Wasif can be read here.
Whitney Museum entrance doused in fake blood on Nov 22
The Palestinian-American youth movement Within Our Lifetime shared photos of the protest on their Instagram, stating:
“Today as we marched along the West Side we were blocked by police from entering the high line and from passing by the Whitney museum, probably because they know of the history of Palestine and other movements organizing against the Whitney’s complicity in genocide.
Fake blood was thrown on the steps of the Whitney Museum during today's march as people shouted "Ken Griffin is a terrorist!", referring to the billionaire hedge fund CEO who condemned pro-Palestine Harvard students and said pro-Palestine students should be blacklisted just last month.
In 2019, @wolpalestine along with @decolonizethisplace and many others forced Warren Kanders, CEO of safariland (a teargas company) to step down from the board of the Whitney Museum as his teargas was being used to oppress protests and social movements worldwide, from Ferguson to Palestine.
We now demand that Ken Griffin resign or be expelled from the board immediately! There is blood on the hands of the Whitney museum!”
The Museum Folkwang in Germany has canceled part of an exhibition devoted to Afrofuturism, due to the curator’s pro-Palestine social media posts
The ‘Afrofuturism’ section of the We is Future exhibition at Museum Folkwang, curated by Anaïs Duplan was set to open on Nov 24. The museum Director Peter Gorschlüter said that Duplan’s instagram posts regarding Gaza were “unacceptable” because they “do not acknowledge the terroristic attack of the Hamas and consider the Israeli military operation in Gaza a genocide.” Citing the German Parliament’s opposition to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in 2019, Gorschlüter said in the email that it could look like the museum supported “antisemitic tendencies” and voices that questioned Israel’s right to exist.
I’ve been thinking about the sectors relative silence at the moment, compared to the noise that was made during the BLM protests, in 2020. The stakes were lower then. Anti-racism statements were PR no brainers, they had little affect on the structures that protect our most powerful.
As Black arts workers, a large chunk of us hold jobs on the lower rungs of corporate ladders. This positioning, renders our contribution as relatively insignificant. Supporting us means supporting nothing much, economically speaking.
But now, profits have the potential to be compromised in ways that they weren’t one summer, three years ago and so we are seeing commercial and public gallery PR exercises relating to events in the Middle East, being implemented with caution, if at all.
EVENTS AS OF NOV 16
The Guggenheim Museum temporarily closed off its entrance last Saturday due to protests
Artists and cultural workers staged a protest on the museum stairwell last Saturday, denouncing the Israeli military’s ongoing killing of Palestinian children in Gaza. Protestor’s hung banners depicting paintings by the Spanish street artist Escif. The artworks are based on photographs taken by Palestinian journalists Mahmoud Bassam and Belal Khaled.
Audiomakers for Liberation are a group of anti-racist audio makers, who have been reflecting on the complicity of the audio industry in biased reporting surrounding Gaza. Useful shareable resources and detailed calls to action can be found here.
Ai Weiwei’s forthcoming exhibition at the Lisson Gallery has been cancelled, following a tweet from the artist concerning his views on America’s relationship with Israel.
The artist said in the Art Newspaper that his show has “effectively [been] cancelled” and that the decision was taken “to avoid further disputes and for my own wellbeing”. Read more here.
The Frick Museum in Pittsburg was set to open the exhibition “Treasured Ornament: 10 Centuries of Islamic Art” on November 4th, but postponed citing a scheduling conflict. The gallery said that running the exhibit “risked trivialising Islamic culture at an extraordinarily complex time” and that it could be a source of “unintended insensitivity or offense” and a “distraction”.
Elizabeth Barker, the museum’s executive director then wrote a letter of apology for the handling of the postponement.
Artforum sacked it’s editor in chief of six years, David Velasco. The publishers said that the staff’s decision to post an open letter about events in Gaza failed to meet the organization’s standards.
Velasco responded to his termination of employment, by saying:
I have no regrets. I’m disappointed that a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure.
Following Velasco’s sacking, Artforum senior editors Zack Hatfield and Chloe Wyma and editor Kate Sutton announced they were leaving the magazine.
A group of art dealers and gallerists, including Martin Eisenberg (who owns work by Artforum letter signatories) reportedly launched a pressure campaign asking signatories to remove their names from the letter. Artists Peter Doig, Joan Jonas, Katharina Grosse, and Tomás Saraceno withdrew their signatures.
Palestinian artist living in Berlin, Jumana Manna says that she has lost work opportunities after sharing a social media post showing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
Collectors called for her Wexner exhibition to be cancelled. Her article The Embargo on Empathy followed.
Arts workers are boycotting the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), over alleged institutional censure of the Palestinian liberation movement.
Over 700 people have signed a petition calling out the IDFA’s response to a protest in support of Palestine that occurred during the opening ceremony. Two days later, the IDFA and the festivals director published this statement.
BDZ / Boycott Zabludowicz (ongoing)
The Zabludowicz Collection has been the subject of controversy since 2014 because of Poju Zabludowicz’s ties to pro-Israel groups. The BDZ (Boycott Divest Zabludowicz) is a collective boycott of the Zabludowicz in all its forms, in solidarity with the struggle of Palestinian people.
In 2009, the Guardian reported that Poju was among the biggest funders of the British Israel Communication and Research Centre (BICOM), a lobbying group that disseminates information in support of Israel to British politicians and reporters. Zabludowicz is also the CEO of the Tamares Group, a London-based investment group with a stake in Knafaim Holdings. According to Knafaim’s website, the company provides “military aircraft maintenance services to the Israeli Air Force.” Read the latest information from BDZ here.
Thank you for taking the time.
x Lou.