A person was arrested yesterday, July 31, in reference to the vandalism of Brooklyn Museum Director Anne Pasternak’s residence earlier this summer time, the New York Police Division (NYPD) confirmed to Hyperallergic. Pasternak was one in all 4 museum leaders whose residences have been graffitied with anti-Zionist messages on the morning of June 12, following a huge and closely policed pro-Palestine protest on the Brooklyn Museum on Could 31 that noticed the arrests of dozens of demonstrators.
Taylor Pelton, a 28-year-old illustrator from New York Metropolis, was charged with a hate crime and prison mischief.
Images of the incident confirmed the museum director’s entrance porch doused in pink paint and a white banner with the phrases “Anne Pasternak Brooklyn Museum White-Supremacist Zionist” hanging throughout the doorway. Two inverted pink triangles have been spray-painted on her home windows, an emblem that seems in Hamas army movies to point Israeli targets. Within the aftermath of the incident, some additionally pointed to the Nazis’ use of inverted pink triangles to categorise their victims, although the pink form particularly was used to designate political prisoners. Others hint the image again to the pink triangle that seems within the Palestinian flag.
The properties of Brooklyn Museum Board Chair Barbara Vogelstein, Board Treasurer Neil Simpkins, and President and Chief Working Officer Kimberly Panicek Trueblood have been focused as nicely. In response to Hyperallergic’s request for remark, a Brooklyn Museum spokesperson mentioned that “these affected are cooperating with the authorities.” The investigation is ongoing, NYPD mentioned.
Reached by Hyperallergic, Pelton’s lawyer, Moira Meltzer-Cohen, mentioned she couldn’t touch upon this particular case, however expressed concern over “the overall development towards alleging antisemitic hate crimes within the context of expressions of grief and rage over Israel’s assaults on Palestine.”
“Any time we see charging enhancements being utilized in a politically motivated approach, it ought to give us pause,” Meltzer-Cohen mentioned. “The declare that the Jewish Peoples, who’re traditionally oppressed non secular teams, are synonymous with the state of Israel, which is a world nuclear energy, shouldn’t be traditionally correct and it isn’t impartial. It capabilities to discourage criticism of the highly effective by exploiting legal guidelines supposed to guard the susceptible.”
(photographs Rhea Nayyar and Maya Pontone/Hyperallergic)
The characterization of the vandalism as an act of antisemitism by political figures corresponding to NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and its investigation as a hate crime by NYPD, was instantly repudiated by pro-Palestine activists who denounced what they understand because the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism amid Israel’s ongoing assaults on Gaza. Media retailers together with the New York Instances initially misidentified all 4 museum leaders focused as Jewish; solely Pasternak is Jewish, a correction within the Instances’s report later clarified.
In a assertion to Hyperallergic, an nameless group claiming duty for the July 12 vandalism cited “the museum’s complicity within the Palestinian genocide,” together with board members’ ties to weapon manufacturing and different Israeli army pursuits.
“Our motion is a retaliation in opposition to the museum’s direct connections to the networks that materially assist the genocidal entity in addition to its collaboration with the fascist NYPD,” the assertion mentioned, referring to the police presence on the Could 31 protest.
The Brooklyn Museum advised Hyperallergic on the time that it didn’t name NYPD to the demonstration and that “the police brutality that passed off was devastating.”
Editor’s word 8/2/24 10:38am EST: A earlier model of this text omitted the arrested particular person’s first identify in error. This has been corrected.