Guests to the Brooklyn Museum this Saturday, January 18, might have met among the artists included in one of many establishment’s present exhibitions, however not beneath regular circumstances. On the entrance, a number of of them had been handing out flyers with the message “Stop the Genocide” spelled within the museum’s signature font with interlocking Os, framed by the sample of a keffiyeh, the Arab headscarves often known as symbols of Palestinian solidarity.
They’re a part of a gaggle of twenty-two contributors in The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition calling on the establishment to “take a clear public moral stance” on Palestine after directors didn’t situation a press release denouncing Israel’s assaults on Gaza and denied their requests so as to add keffiyehs to their paintings shows after the exhibition opened.
The artists — together with Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Wendy Cohen, Alex Dolores Salerno, Leo High quality, Amaryllis Flowers, Ronen Gamil, Chitra Ganesh, Sumin Hwang, Nina Katchadourian, Tuesday Smillie, Catherine Tafur, Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, Zac Thompson, Sophia Wallace, and Betty Yu — have been organizing all through the present, which opened on October 4 and involves an in depth this Sunday, January 26. (Seven others didn’t verify whether or not they consented to being named by the point of this text’s publication.)
In solidarity with the artists’ calls for, almost two dozen neighborhood teams and native Brooklyn collectives despatched a letter to museum management final Friday, January 17.
A flyer the group handed out to museum guests on Saturday, January 18 (picture courtesy the artists)
The group’s efforts started forward of the opening of the exhibition, an open-call present of artists from the borough timed with the Brooklyn Museum’s two hundredth anniversary. Days earlier than the present debuted to the general public, lots of signed an open letter urging the establishment to “end its silence on the ongoing genocidal violence against the people of Palestine.”
That missive additionally requested the museum to name for a ceasefire, decide to the Palestinian Marketing campaign for the Educational and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), and supply proof that it had ended its partnership with the Financial institution of New York Mellon, which has some investments within the Israeli weapons producer Elbit Methods. (Hyperallergic has contacted BNY Mellon for remark.)
The next month, 22 artists within the exhibition — out of a complete of over 200 — requested to change the shows of their work to hold keffiyehs subsequent to their items in what they referred to as a “collective artistic intervention.”
The museum declined, arguing that artists had formally agreed for the works to be displayed as submitted and that agreeing to such a modification would go away room for different alteration requests that might not be accommodated, one of many artists, Ronen Gamil, associated to Hyperallergic.
Set up view of Catherine Tafur’s paintings within the Brooklyn Museum’s Brooklyn Artists Exhibition (picture courtesy the artist)
Gamil mentioned the museum additionally informed artists that it had “taken lessons from their past concession to selectively allow an alteration of a work in support of Ukraine’s war with Russia.” (In 2022, the Brooklyn Museum wrapped Deborah Kass’s yellow out of doors sculpture “OY/YO” (2015) in blue cloth in solidarity with Ukraine.)
“First the museum said the work must be displayed as submitted according to the loan form,” one other artist within the group, Catherine Tafur, informed Hyperallergic. “I found this to be disingenuous because I know artists have changed their works in exhibitions at other venues. Then the museum said that changing the display would open the door to other requests, and compared it to displaying Israeli and American flags.”
“This comparison misrepresents our intent,” Tafur mentioned. “Our request was to show a condemnation of genocide and support for an oppressed people. Waving an Israeli flag during this war shows support for genocide, and an American flag shows patriotism. There is no comparison.”
Tafur added that her creative apply usually facilities the political violence she witnessed rising up in Peru, and the anti-colonial views she has cultivated are a results of this private expertise. “Speaking out against the settler-colonialism of Israel is a natural extension of my work,” she mentioned.
Works by Amaryllis Flowers (left, picture courtesy Cahterine Tafur) and Ronen Gamil (proper, picture by Alex Dolores Salerno) on the Brooklyn Museum
The Crown Heights establishment’s legacy as a hub of pro-Palestine activism dates again to a minimum of 2016, when teams protested an exhibition of pictures of Israel and the Occupied West Financial institution whose funders included Taglit Birthright co-founder Charles Bronfman and Financial institution Hapoalim, one in every of Israel’s main banks. The activists put in guerrilla wall labels itemizing the Arabic names of the websites depicted in pictures.
Prior to now yr, the museum has been a web site of large protests in opposition to Israel’s assaults on Gaza, which organizations together with the United Nations, Amnesty Worldwide, and Human Rights Watch have characterised as a genocide.
One such protest final Could noticed the arrests of dozens of activists and drew allegations that the museum didn’t do sufficient to cease the violent police response in opposition to demonstrators. (In a press release to Hyperallergic on the time of reporting, the Brooklyn Museum mentioned that “the police brutality that took place was devastating” and claimed that it didn’t name the New York Police Division on protesters.) Months later, the properties of 4 museum leaders together with Director Anne Pasternak had been defaced with crimson paint and graffiti messages equivalent to “white supremacist Zionist.” New York officers described the vandalism as “antisemitic,” and three people had been charged with hate crimes in reference to the incident in November. Of the 4 museum leaders whose properties had been focused, solely Pasternak is Jewish.
Police in riot gear outdoors the Brooklyn Museum on Could 31, 2024 (picture Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic)
Many see the Brooklyn Museum as inextricably entwined with a historical past of political motion and the combat for freedom of expression. In 1999, crowds gathered outdoors the neoclassical constructing to protest assaults on Chris Ofili’s portray “The Holy Virgin Mary” (1996) by Catholic teams. Artist Chitra Ganesh informed Hyperallergic final fall that she was “deeply inspired” as a younger artist in that second.
Citing the museum’s said dedication to platforming “issue of social justice,” some view the establishment’s reticence to talk out on Palestine as a contradiction.
“I think a lot of museums want the art but not the artist. They want the object but not the person behind it,” Wendy Cohen, one of many Brooklyn Artists Exhibition contributors behind the newest organizing effort, informed Hyperallergic. “They want the accolades of working with living artists, but not the reality of contending with our voices.”
The museum supplied the artists the choice to take away their artworks from the exhibition. As a substitute, Cohen defined, the group determined to mobilize and make its message recognized publicly, invoking a duty to “engage with and challenge museums.”
“By keeping our work in the show, we’re saying that we’re here and we’re not going anywhere,” Cohen mentioned. “We’re going to use the platform that comes with this opportunity to advocate for human rights.”
“We hope that the Brooklyn Museum will rise up, demonstrate social courage in breaking the widespread silence and complicity in the decades-long atrocities in Palestine-Israel, and that their responsible actions will instigate a chain reaction among other cultural and academic institutions, municipalities, and beyond, to pave the path towards justice and peace on that land,” Gamil mentioned.
Cohen added: “My art is about love, family, and memory. Aren’t these all things we’re advocating for when talking about our shared humanity and moral obligations to speak out against genocide?”