Employees of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) have released a statement calling on the institution to take a firmer stance on the Israel-Hamas war, calling for the museum to demand an “unconditional ceasefire” in Gaza.
The statement’s signatories are also urging museum leaders to either commit to or emulate the tenets of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), an initiative launched by Palestinian intellectuals in the West Bank to call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israeli cultural institutions. As of this writing, the statement has been signed by more than 175 artists and other members of MoMA’s broader community, in addition to 33 current employees.
“Over the last five months, the world has witnessed a devastating escalation of violence in the region that has disrupted the daily lives of Palestinians in unimaginable ways,” the statement reads in part. “We firmly believe that the ongoing crisis there must be recognised as genocide and addressed with such urgency. Furthermore, we seek to rally our colleagues globally within the cultural field to actively participate in and support this urgent movement”. The statement cites World Health Organization figures from the end of January that more than “100,000 Gazans are either dead, injured or missing and presumed dead”.
The statement criticises MoMA’s leaders for their “profound silence” on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The statement’s authors allege that MoMA’s current attitude toward the conflict goes against against the museum’s mission “to connect people from around the world to the art of our time”.
“The credibility and sincerity of our international purview is incomplete and compromised as we quietly watch Gaza’s invaluable art, culture and history be systematically destroyed, stolen and erased,” the statement adds.
As the Israel-Hamas war has intensified, art and heritage institutions around the world are grappling with how (or if) to address the spiraling crisis. Since the 7 October 2023 Hamas terror attack on Israel, in which around 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage, over 28,000 people in Gaza have been killed during the Israeli military response, according to the health ministry in Gaza.
Day before the open letter was release, MoMA was briefly closed on 10 February after around 800 Pro-Palestinian protestors infiltrated the building and began to distribute pamphlets outlining the alleged financial investments in Israeli weapons and surveillance manufacturing of five museum trustees, Hyperallergic reported. One of these trustees is Leon Black, the private equity billionaire with ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
That MoMA protest was concurrent with a similar action across town at the Brooklyn Museum, which resulted in 10 arrests and one court citation from the New York Police Department. Days later a talk at the Jewish Museum by the artist Zoya Cherkassky-Nnadi related to her works made in response to the 7 October attacks, which are on view there, was repeatedly halted by protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Artnews reported.
The MoMA employee statement emphasizes the toll Israel’s bombings have taken on the infrastructure and cultural heritage of Palestine. There are more than 130 registered historic sites in the small historical enclave; in January, a Spanish NGO, Heritage for Peace, reported that 104 of those sites had been damaged or destroyed during the five month onslaught of destruction and loss.
