Protests Over Gaza Intensify at American Art Museums

[BidenPresident]

The event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in February was titled “Love Letter to SoMa,” after the San Francisco neighborhood that the contemporary art museum calls home.

But eight of the artists involved in it staged an intervention called “Love Letter to Gaza,” altering their own works, including by spray-painting “Viva Palestine” on one, and unfurling a banner that said “No More Blood Money — Ceasefire Now.” The artists’ demands included calls for the museum to boycott Israeli institutions and “remove all Zionist board members and funders.”


In the aftermath, the museum closed its galleries for a month and its interim chief executive, Sara Fenske Bahat, resigned.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/arts/design/israel-gaza-protests-museums.html

 

[BidenPresident]

Last month, hundreds of protesters gathered on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and unfurled an artist quilt honoring Palestinians. As demonstrators sang and played instruments, other activists distributed pamphlets inside that labeled one trustee as a “Zionist” and another as a “war profiteer.” The group also praised a letter signed earlier that month by more than 150 staff members asking museum leaders to “take a stand in defense of Palestinians and the cultural heritage of Palestine.”

 

[T. A. Gardner]

Pepper spray, preferably in the industrial size fogger dispenser, would fix a lot of that problem.