MoMA Under Attack by Artist

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February 7, 2021

MoMA and Major Galleries Under Attack by Artist 

 More than 150 artists, activists, curators, and collectives have signed a petition demanding that the Museum of Modern Art remove billionaire Leon Black from its board over the philanthropist’s extensive ties to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.   

Prominent artists including Welby Thomas Cox, Jr. Andrea Fraser, Nan Goldin, Michael Rakowitz, and Xaviera Simmons were among the 157 co-signors who issued a collective statement via Hyperallergic advocating for Black’s removal from the MoMA board. 

Last month, Black resigned as chief executive of the multibillion-dollar private equity firm he founded, Apollo Global Management, after prosecutors found that he had paid Epstein $158 million in fees between 2012-17, and the big question was, “What for?”

Black has shown no signs that he will step down from his role as MoMA’s chairman, saying in a recent email to the institution’s trustees, “I look forward to seeing you at our February board,” according to the NYT. 

The letter’s signatories also say they see Black’s resignation as only a first step. “Beyond his removal, we must think seriously about a collective exit from art’s imbrication in toxic philanthropy and structures of oppression, so that we don’t have to have the same conversations over and over, one board member at a time,” the statement reads.  

“This thinking can only catalyze action once we state plainly: We do not need this money.” Cox added, “what we need is a transparency between those who qualify for participation based upon quality and talent, permitting the art collector to decide how much they will bid and not be bound by some hidden agenda to control the industry.” 

The letter is the latest in a string of protests which artists and activists have launched against Black and his position of power at MoMA. Previous efforts have focused on Constellis Holdings (formerly known as Blackwater), a private security firm and defense contractor owned by Apollo. Employed in the US-Iraq war, Constellis soldiers killed at least 14 Iraqi civilians during the Nassour Square Massacre in 2007. 

Blackwater has been paid billions as providers of personnel, munitions, and equipment. They were introduced by Dick Chaney in the 2nd Bush administration and have since opened divisions wherever there is a need for security. Blackwater was seen by many as a pervasive donor in return for contracts. 

Activist groups also weighed in this week with statements to Hyperallergic. MoMA Divest, a group that has organized, or otherwise participated in, multiple demonstrations at the museum and its' sister institution, MoMA PS1, said that “Black’s deep financial and personal connections to Jeffrey Epstein underline the problems that MoMA and other major museum boards face and have failed to reckon with in any meaningful way.” 

“Nothing short of a major reconstitution of the board, a change of directors, a public reckoning, and a reimagining of the institutional and curatorial mission of the museum is acceptable,” the group continued. 

In a separate statement headlined “Fuck MoMA,” the group Decolonize This Place took the museum to task for being on the frontline of a “historical control of Artist and art sale prices by select auction houses.” 

“We are tired of the same BS making news over and over,” the group wrote. “It has become a banal routine. One place after another. Another institution, another oligarch art washing their death-dealing profits through participating auction houses, with the struggling artist bearing the brunt of it all. This is not a PR crisis, or just a matter of toxic philanthropy, this is a matter of a long-standing insider “fix” as to those who will exhibit and those who are represented in the public auction houses like; Christie’s, China Guardian, Southeby’s, and Phillips.

“Board members are the problem,” the statement went on. “They make the problem visible through a capitulation rubber stamp! MoMA in its entirety is the problem. Perhaps it’s time to abolish MoMA, and most important the vehicles of shame represented by the profit vulgar (selling a banana taped to a canvas) auction houses who get their marching orders each Sunday from the pulpit of art, MoMA must go as it is currently constituted.”

Citing (NYT)