Employees, fellows and volunteers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York have signed onto an open letter to director and chief executive Max Hollein, calling on the institution to “take a stand in defence of Palestinians and the cultural heritage of Palestine” amid Israel’s continued bombing of Gaza.
On Monday (11 March), staffers delivered the open letter to Hollein, asking for the museum to publish a statement calling for the bombing to end, according to Hyperallergic. More than 31,000 Palestinians have been reported killed since 7 October, when around 1,200 Israelis were reportedly killed and about 250 taken hostage in a Hamas terrorist attack in Israel.
In addition to the loss of human life, most buildings in Gaza have been destroyed, according to the Met staff’s letter. More than 100 mosques have reportedly been left in ruins, including most of the Great Omari Mosque, the oldest in Gaza. The Church of Saint Porphyrius, believed to be the third-oldest church in the world, was damaged in an Israeli airstrike as it sheltered hundreds of Palestinians. Institutions like the Rafah Museum, the Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center and the Al Qarara Cultural Museum have been destroyed, according to media reports.
The Met employees pointed out in the letter that there is precedence for the Met speaking out on the protection of cultural-heritage sites in times of conflict: in 2001, the museum vocally opposed the destruction of the two Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and even offered to pay for a team to travel there to save any portable statues. In 2020, Hollein and Daniel Weiss, then-president and chief executive of the museum, released a joint statement condemning then-president Donald Trump after he threatened to target sites “important to Iran & the Iranian culture” in a social-media post. In 2022, the Met spoke out against the destruction of Kuindzhi Art Museum in Mariupol, Ukraine, by Russian airstrikes. (The following year, the museum reclassified several artists in its collection from Russian to Ukrainian to clarify their national origins.)
In the letter, staff asked Hollein to take steps to review the Met’s collection of Palestinian works of art, correct any inaccurate attributions and highlight work by Palestinian artists both in the museum’s galleries and online. They also asked that staff be protected from retaliation over speaking out against the bombing of Palestine.
“Since this war began, the art world has seen widespread retaliation against cultural workers who oppose the destruction in Gaza. There is now fear of backlash among workers who would like to speak out. As workers of this institution, we hope [the Met] will keep a higher moral and professional standard,” the letter reads.
Staffers told Hyperallergic that while Hollein provided an initial response to the letter, he has “not made any firm commitments”. The group of staffers who wrote the letter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Art Newspaper.
“The Met values the voices of our staff and encourages perspectives to be shared,” a spokesperson told The Art Newspaper in a statement. “The museum is committed to reflecting a wide array of experiences and views throughout our collection, exhibitions and programmes, and strives to be a source of solace, protection and community for both our staff and our diverse audiences.”
In February, employees of New York’s Museum of Modern Art called on the institution to demand an “unconditional ceasefire” in Gaza and take a firmer position on the Israel-Hamas war. Their wishes have yet to be officially answered.
