Because the Brooklyn Museum prepares to open its anniversary open-call exhibition this Friday, October 4, a press release of solidarity with Palestine co-authored by 4 artists within the present has drawn over 200 signatures and counting from artwork and cultural employees. The letter is reproduced in full on the finish of this text.
Urging the Brooklyn Museum to “finish its silence on the continued genocidal violence towards the folks of Palestine,” the missive echoes earlier calls by museum staffers and neighborhood members for the reason that begin of Israel’s assault on Gaza and the Occupied West Financial institution following Hamas’s October 7 assault.
“As we witness the livestreaming of slaughtered civilians, bombed out faculties, decimated hospitals, razed refugee camps, and traumatized kids who’ve misplaced their complete households, we ask: When will the cultural establishments that declare to signify us hear our issues and communicate out towards these atrocities?” reads the letter, co-authored by artists Tuesday Smillie, Chitra Ganesh, Amaryllis R. Flowers, and Alex Dolores Salerno.
The assertion additionally asks museum management to decide to the Palestinian Marketing campaign for the Educational and Cultural Boycott of Israel, divest from corporations and people linked to Israeli army pursuits, and “finish all NYPD presence” on the establishment. The Brooklyn Museum has been the location of a number of pro-Palestine protests led by quite a few activist teams in latest months, together with a large demonstration on Could 31 that was met with an aggressive response from the New York Police Division and dozens of arrests. Lower than two weeks later, the properties of Director Anne Pasternak and three board members had been vandalized with anti-Zionist graffiti; a videographer who filmed the incident was charged with a hate crime in August.
All 4 co-authors, together with a number of signatories, are collaborating in The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition, a neighborhood present organized in celebration of the museum’s two hundredth anniversary. For some, like Ganesh, their relationship with the establishment goes again a long time.
“I bear in mind being deeply impressed as a younger artist, seeing Leon Golub and Nancy Spero talking out in entrance of the Brooklyn Museum in assist of inventive freedom across the Sensation exhibition in 1999, when Chris Ofili’s work was vandalized,” Ganesh, who had a solo exhibition on the museum in 2014, informed Hyperallergic.
This legacy of outspoken advocacy, and the museum’s acknowledged dedication to illuminating social justice points, jars with its “silence on the atrocities being dedicated by Israel,” reads the letter, whose signatories embrace artists Nan Goldin and Demian DinéYazhi’, amongst others, and former Senior Curator Carmen Hermo.
Learn the letter in full beneath. The record of signatories is usually up to date and may be considered right here.
On the eve of the Brooklyn Museum’s two hundredth Anniversary, we the artists and neighborhood of Brooklyn and past stand collectively to specific our unequivocal solidarity with the folks of Palestine and the Palestinian battle for liberation. We take the event of the Brooklyn Artists’ Exhibition, celebrating the Museum, the place over 200 artists and scores of cultural employees are exhibiting work and offering our labor, as a possibility to amplify continued calls to sentence the continued atrocities waged towards the folks of Palestine. We as soon as once more urge the Brooklyn Museum, an establishment with a historical past of supporting freedom of speech and dissent, to finish its silence on the continued genocidal violence towards the folks of Palestine.
We’re horrified, deeply disturbed, and heartbroken by the army bombardment and settler colonial violence during the last 12 months that has killed greater than 41,000 Palestinians, not together with the a whole bunch of 1000’s of deaths from harm, acute lack of medical care, hunger, illness, and people folks lacking underneath rubble, predominantly ladies and youngsters. We acknowledge that this genocidal violence builds on greater than 76 years of bloodshed, together with the compelled removing of Palestinians from their properties, ongoing army enforcement of an apartheid state, the brutalization of civilians, relentless bombing of designated protected zones, weaponized hunger, and unlawful annexation within the West Financial institution. Over 76 years of terror perpetrated by the federal government of Israel, within the identify of Zionism, with American monetary and army assist.
As artists and cultural employees, we’re dedicated to constructing a follow, ethos, and inventive expression rooted within the potential of artwork to spark a deeper shared humanity and transcendent concepts of justice. As we witness the livestreaming of slaughtered civilians, bombed out faculties, decimated hospitals, razed refugee camps, and traumatized kids who’ve misplaced their complete households, we ask: when will the cultural establishments that declare to signify us hear our issues and communicate out towards these atrocities? In a up to date arts panorama that proclaims institutional curiosity in increasing range inside the subject, leverages the optics of illustration and inclusion to advertise a picture of assist for racial justice, queer feminisms and de-colonial practices, we ask the Brooklyn Museum to deal with its silence on probably the most brutal and lethal army aggression of the twenty first century.
For near a 12 months, the broader Brooklyn Museum neighborhood of neighbors, staff, and artists, have repeatedly requested the Museum’s administration to make a press release denouncing the continued genocide towards Palestinians enacted by Israel, to name for a right away and everlasting ceasefire in Palestine, and to divest from conflict profiteering. Museum employees printed an open letter in assist of Palestine on November twelfth 2023, recognizing that “American establishments’ silence on this matter contributes to the erasure of this genocide from the historic file” and highlighting contradictions between the Museum’s acknowledged values and its silence on the atrocities being dedicated by Israel. The Museum has since failed to answer its staff and neighborhood whereas fostering a local weather of worry amongst guests and workers who assist Palestinian liberation.
The Brooklyn Museum’s values, as listed on the web site, declare that the establishment “endeavor(s) to carry consideration to problems with social justice via our programming and partnerships, amplifying the voices of those that have been traditionally marginalized, and hope to encourage motion and influence.” That’s the reason we, the undersigned name on the Brooklyn Museum to instantly:
- Unequivocally denounce Israel’s genocide, name for a right away, everlasting stop hearth and arms embargo, in a everlasting submit throughout all social media platforms utilized by Brooklyn Museum.
- Decide to the Palestinian Marketing campaign for the Educational and Cultural Boycott of Israel
- Committing to PACBI is a dedication to not perform as an ideological software for normalizing and legitimizing Israeli apartheid by boycotting: Israeli cultural establishments, cultural merchandise commissioned by an official Israeli physique or a non-Israeli physique that promotes Israel, occasions and actions sponsored by an official Israeli physique or a complicit establishment, and different normalization initiatives. It isn’t a boycott of Israeli people.
- Finish all NYPD presence on the Brooklyn Museum.
- Throughout the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020, the Museum opened its foyer and restrooms to protestors, and shared pictures of the Rally for Black Trans Lives on social media –aligning themselves with US-based social actions. Right now, the Museum collaborates with the NYPD who brutalizes protestors, murders members of our neighborhood for minor offenses like fare evasion, and shoots harmless folks. Their violence doesn’t preserve Brooklyn’s communities protected. The NYPD will not be welcome in neighborhood areas.
- Decide to honoring free speech and freedom of expression, together with solidarity with Palestine.
- In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum fought again towards state censorship in protection of Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” underneath threats by mayor Rudy Guiliani. Simply final 12 months, the Museum supported an artist intervention in solidarity with Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion of the Donbas area. This historical past should be honored. There may be no policing, punishment, or retaliation for guests and Museum staff for expressing solidarity with Palestine.
- Present documentation proving that Brooklyn Museum has ended its Company Partnership with Financial institution of New York Mellon, which has investments in Israeli weapons producer Elbit Techniques and has supported the Associates of Israel Protection Drive Donor Suggested Fund.
- Financial institution of New York Mellon’s identify has been faraway from the web site, however has the Company Partnership ended? We would like readability and transparency.