A spread of high-profile artists and writers related to the Whitney Museum‘s Independent Study Program issued an open letter on Monday through which they denounced the establishment’s resolution to cancel a pro-Palestine efficiency in Might.
“The Whitney Museum’s said mission and core values are grounded exactly in its acceptance of dissent, reinvention, and activism,” the open letter stated. “If the Whitney Museum denies the ISP the power to independently persist as a web site of critique over an ongoing genocide, then the Whitney Museum loses all declare to uphold the very values it cites as its guiding rules.”
Its signatories have been primarily ISP alumni, and included artists as Emily Jacir, Andrea Fraser, Mark Dion, Carlos Motta, Candice Breitz, Omar Mismar, Deborah Kass, and Hannah Black. Additionally among the many signatories have been former school members, together with the artwork historian Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, in addition to former seminar leaders resembling artists Walid Raad and Louise Lawler.
The letter addressed the cancelation of the performance No Aesthetics Outdoors My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Efficiency, by the artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi. It was canceled two days earlier than it was to look in a curatorial exhibition by the ISP program, which has cultivated a number of generations of artists, curators, and critics.
In a earlier iteration of the work, staged by the Poetry Challenge in collaboration with Jewish Currents, Tbakhi invited attendees to depart the efficiency in the event that they “imagine in Israel in any incarnation.” After that introduction, performers then interpreted scores by Natalie Diaz, Christina Sharpe, and Brandon Shimoda that referred to grief.
The Whitney’s prior assertion talked about the introduction and accused the artists of getting “valorized particular acts of violence and imagery of violence.” Furthermore, the museum stated that there was “no occasion after we would discover it acceptable to single out members of our neighborhood primarily based on their perception system and ask them to depart an exhibition or efficiency.”
Information of the efficiency’s cancelation broke in mid-Might and coincided with stories that artist Gregg Bordowitz had been demoted from his publish as director of the ISP. In line with Artnet Information, Bordowitz was demoted in February. “The museum’s present intrusion into the tutorial curriculum and administration of the ISP is unprecedented,” Bordowitz stated on the time.
The stories of the efficiency’s cancelation have been adopted by a protest held at the museum final month.
In Monday’s open letter, the ISP alumni wrote, “The canceled efficiency, scrutinized paintings and scholarship, and environment of censorship have their roots in a broader political local weather of concern and intimidation in the USA, and comply with different current crackdowns on free expression, protest, and speech by artists and students supporting Palestine.”
The letter appeared the identical day that Scott Rothkopf, the Whitney’s director, despatched the ISP an electronic mail through which he stated he would “pause” this system’s 2025–26 tutorial 12 months.
“At the moment, this system is with no Director,” Rothkopf wrote in that electronic mail, which was obtained by ARTnews. “This management hole has strained each the strategic imaginative and prescient and the day-to-day operations of this system. We respect the large dedication contributors make when becoming a member of the ISP.”
Rothkopf additional wrote that “this era of institutional reflection is consistent with the spirit and values of studying, inquiry, and important follow which can be foundational to the ISP and the Whitney as a complete.”
