A suspect has been arrested in connection to the June 11 vandalism of Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak residence, police introduced Wednesday. The information was first reported by New York Each day Information.
Taylor Pelton, 28, has reportedly been charged with prison mischief as a hate crime. Pasternak’s Brooklyn Heights residence was splashed with crimson paint in an obvious protest of the museum’s ties to Zionist organizations. The residences of a number of Brooklyn Museum board trustees have been additionally focused. 5 suspects are nonetheless sought by police in connection to the crime.
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At Pasternak’s residence, vandals unfurled a banner that learn: “Anne Pasternak / Brooklyn Museum / White Supremacist Zionist.” Beneath that assertion, in a smaller, crimson font, have been the phrases “Funds Genocide.”
The incident was decried on X by New York Metropolis Mayor Eric Adams, who vowed to “convey the criminals accountable right here to justice.
The Affiliation of Artwork Museum Administrators, an business group for institutional leaders that counts some 240 members, together with Pasternak, wrote in a press release that it “unequivocally and forcefully” condemned what it described as an “antisemitic act.”
The Brooklyn Museum has repeatedly confronted calls from artists, activists, and cultural staff to sever monetary ties to Israel and for museum management to publicly time period Israel’s army actions in Gaza a genocide. On Might 31, an enormous pro-Palestine march ended on the Brooklyn Museum, the place some 30 activists occupied the foyer for an indication during which they demanded that the establishment disclose its monetary ties to Israel and divest from them. Exterior the museum, roughly 1,000 protestors echoed their calls, with some climbing onto the ceiling of the museum’s glass pavilion after being denied entry to the foyer.
The motion resulted in dozens of arrests by the NYPD, and museum management subsequently acquired criticism from activists over what they described as an extreme use of power in opposition to unarmed protestors. In a press release to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Museum stated that “the police brutality that came about [on May 31] is devastating.” Because the museum is metropolis property located on city-owned land, the NYPD doesn’t want permission to enter the premises.
Protests on the Brooklyn Museum in December centered on the establishment’s company partnership with Financial institution of New York Mellon, which has investments in Israeli weapons producer Elbit Techniques and which has supported the Associates of Israel Protection Pressure Donor Suggested Fund. (The Financial institution informed the Monetary Instances in April that it invests in Elbit “on account of necessities by its passive index funding methods.”)
In response to Palestinian well being authorities, greater than 39,000 folks have been killed in Gaza because the October 7 Hamas assault on account of Israel’s air and floor marketing campaign.