At the least 14 employees of the Noguchi Museum in New York Metropolis, together with all 9 front-facing employees, are taking part in a piece stoppage at the moment, Wednesday, August 21, in protest of a coverage that prohibits workers from sporting the Palestinian headscarves generally known as keffiyehs.
Final week, over 50 employees — greater than two-thirds of the museum’s 72-person employees — signed an inside petition calling for the coverage to be reversed, citing the anti-Palestinian sentiment of the choice amid Israel’s ongoing assaults on Gaza in addition to issues over potential harm to the museum’s repute and credibility.
“Our Astoria group is extremely numerous, and contains a excessive inhabitants of
Palestinians,” reads the petition textual content, which Hyperallergic reviewed. “Banning the keffiyeh, a culturally important garment, units a powerful precedent for the establishment.”
In a collective assertion shared with Hyperallergic, the employees additionally allege that the museum singled out a Black worker for his or her use of the keffiyeh, compounding the impression of a coverage they are saying is discriminatory.
The employee in query, a gallery attendant on the museum for over three years, was known as right into a spontaneous personal assembly with Director Amy Hau and an HR consultant on Wednesday morning, August 14, in a newly acquired property a few block and a half from the museum. The worker, who spoke to Hyperallergic on the situation of anonymity, was stunned by each the casual nature of the assembly and Hau’s request that they cease sporting their keffiyeh. Within the spring, the employee had been requested to take away a “Free Palestine” hat as a result of it went in opposition to a museum costume code rule banning textual content and pictures; they complied.
Against this, their keffiyeh, which bore an summary black-and-white fishnet sample and the crimson and inexperienced colours of the Palestinian flag, didn’t seem to violate these phrases.
“I felt very caught off guard and ambushed,” the employee stated. “Clearly, issues are politicized, however I’m displaying my assist for Palestinians as a result of I don’t actually see this as a political factor. I used to be raised Christian and I imagine in peace.”

Just a few weeks earlier, their supervisor had notified them {that a} picture of them sporting the keffiyeh was circulating on social media and that the museum had obtained electronic mail complaints. However the supervisor was supportive and didn’t ask them to take away it, in keeping with the employee.
Final Wednesday morning, nonetheless, Hau despatched the employee residence after they refused to take off the headscarf.
Later that afternoon, the director communicated to employees onsite that “political costume” was prohibited as a result of it made some visitors really feel “unsafe” and “uncomfortable” and since it may put employees in danger.
Heads of various departments expressed their concern throughout a month-to-month all-staff assembly the subsequent morning that “led to tears,” in keeping with a press release from the employees taking part in at the moment’s work stoppage. When the aforementioned gallery attendant and their colleague have been despatched residence after refusing to take away their keffiyehs, a few dozen employees within the Customer Companies, Archives, and Schooling departments in addition to artwork handlers for the Noguchi’s ongoing anniversary exhibition walked out.
The museum was closed from Friday, August 16 by the weekend, a choice communicated by management in an electronic mail as “a chance to reset and recharge.”
An announcement from the museum despatched in response to Hyperallergic‘s request for remark stated the establishment has a accountability “to foster a secure, inclusive, and welcoming atmosphere for all employees and guests.”
“Lately, issues have been raised a few employees member sporting a keffiyeh whereas at work on the Museum,” the assertion learn. “Whereas we perceive that the intention behind sporting this garment was to specific private views, we acknowledge that such expressions can unintentionally alienate segments of our numerous visitorship.”

During the last 10 months since Hamas’s October 7 assault, Palestinian artists and activists have confronted silencing and retaliation at cultural establishments worldwide as worldwide organizations plead for an finish to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has killed over 40,000 individuals within the area.
No matter their stance on particular points, such because the motion to boycott Israeli cultural establishments or the query of Palestinian statehood, although, most employees on the Noguchi Museum really feel that the prohibition of the keffiyeh quantities to the deliberate erasure of a individuals’s materials tradition.
“The keffiyeh together with different patterned head coverings is worn by many all through the desert nations and I think about it part of my household’s cultural and ethnic heritage,” stated one full-time worker with household members belonging to the Southwest Asian and North Africa (SWANA) diaspora, who requested to not be recognized for worry of retaliation.
The employee, whose function doesn’t contain interfacing with guests, additionally advised Hyperallergic that they opposed the museum’s choice to impose the coverage throughout departments.
“The museum has the best to set the costume code or uniform for front-facing employees. The extension of the coverage to all employees as of this morning was upsetting,” they stated.

Earlier this spring, New York’s Museum of Trendy Artwork (MoMA) apologized after denying entry to a customer who was carrying a keffiyeh in his backpack. In a assertion to Hyperallergic, the museum acknowledged that safety employees at bag test had mistaken Brooklyn resident Ju-Hyun Park’s headband for a banner, an merchandise listed as banned on MoMA’s web site.
However for the employees of the Noguchi Museum — an establishment devoted to the work and legacy of a vocally anti-war artist who voluntarily entered an internment camp for Japanese Individuals in 1942 — the current ban on keffiyehs may be at odds with its mission. Isamu Noguchi created a collection of sculptures about his internment expertise, which the museum devoted an exhibition to in 2018, and made different haunting works exploring the results of the atomic bomb. He additionally devised ideas for memorials to the victims of the US’s lethal assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a chunk impressed by these designs, from 1982, is at present on view on the Queens establishment.
Organizing on-line below the group title Noguchi Museum Rights, the staffers hope museum management will take heed to their issues and eliminate the coverage, honoring what they see as Noguchi’s dedication to a variety of views and humanitarian causes.
“As employees members we’re devoted to defending and fostering the work and legacy of Isamu Noguchi — a person who understood intimately the injustice of focused discrimination and displacement,” their petition reads. “We imagine that this directive doesn’t serve the general mission of the Museum. We reject the assertion that ‘politics’ may be separated from cultural establishments.”