A gaggle of artists taking part within the Whitney Museum‘s Independent Study Program (ISP) have with withdrawn their work from a capstone exhibition at Westbeth Gallery in protest of the establishment’s cancellation of a pro-Palestine efficiency.
The Whitney introduced the cancellation of No Aesthetics Outdoors My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Efficiency, a bit by artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi, on Could 12, two days earlier than it was scheduled to happen as a part of the programming for the ISP curatorial exhibition “a grammar of consideration.” Per its press supplies, the exhibition aimed to look at the “tangled” legacies of anti-colonial and anti-racist actions worldwide, and encompassed workshops, set up, and efficiency.
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The efficiency, titled after a line within the poem “State of Siege,” by Palestinian author Mahmoud Darwish, was described by its performers as an invite to mourn the Palestinians killed below the Israeli occupation and picture different technique of resistance. For an hour or so, the performers had been to interpret “scores” written by Natalie Diaz, Christina Sharpe, and Brandon Shimoda via bodily and verbal gestures that give kind to grief.
In line with an announcement posted to Instagram from ISP’s Affiliate Director, Sara Nadal-Melsió, No Aesthetics had been canceled by the Whitney Museum after its management considered a recording of its preliminary presentation on the Poetry Venture, which staged the piece in collaboration with Jewish Currents. Tbakhi opened the efficiency with the next deal with to attendees: “You could solely stay on this viewers should you love Palestinians wholly and utterly, you might solely stay should you love us whereas we’re alive and after we are lifeless, after we are combating for survival, dignity, land, return, actual and sustainable life utilizing any and all strategies obtainable to us.”
Tbakhi continued that attendees couldn’t stay for the efficiency in the event that they “consider in Israel in any incarnation.” It’s not clear if anybody left the room in the course of the efficiency, video documentation of which was reviewed by ARTnews.
In an announcement to ARTnews, the Whitney stated that its resolution to cancel the efficiency was “clear and crucial,” although not taken evenly.
“In the beginning of the efficiency, one of many artists referred to as for anybody who believes in Israel or America in any incarnation to depart the viewers. Later, the artist valorized particular acts of violence and imagery of violence,” the museum stated, including that there was “no occasion after we would discover it acceptable to single out members of our neighborhood based mostly on their perception system and ask them to depart an exhibition or efficiency.”
The Whitney additionally stated that there are different works analyzing the Israeli occupation and the battle in Gaza which are nonetheless included within the exhibition on the Westbeth Artists Housing constructing, a brief stroll south of the museum.
“The Whitney’s resolution to cancel the present doesn’t come as a whole shock, as for nearly the previous three weeks, our capstone tasks, throughout all ISP cohorts, have undergone an intense degree of scrutiny from the senior administration of the museum,” reads an announcement from the curators Bea Ortega Botas, Kennedy Hollins Jones, Tamara Khasanova, and Ntshadi Mofokeng. “We, as curators, stand by the works of all of the artists in our present, and condemn the museum’s actions.”
Nadal-Melsió added in her assertion that the introduction wouldn’t have been learn on the ISP efficiency, and that Whitney director Scott Rothkopf, who reportedly delivered the information of its cancellation in a gathering, had not visited the exhibition or responded to her requests to higher administration to open a dialogue with the cohort. Nadal-Melsió was employed in February 2024 because the ISP’s first affiliate director. She concluded her assertion by stressing that the main target of the cancellation shouldn’t be Tbakhi, however relatively that the “independence of the ISP has been significantly compromised.”
Since its founding in 1968 by Ron Clark, the Whitney Unbiased Research Program has ushered lots of of artists, curators and critics via its nine-month fellowship. The distinguished program consists of three separate applications: Fifteen candidates are chosen to take part within the Studio Program, 4 within the Curatorial Program, and 6 within the Vital Program, for a complete of 25 per cohort.
No diplomas are issued at its conclusion, however its alumni roster is a litany of New York inventive luminaries, together with Naomi Beckwith, Emily Jacir, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Glenn Ligon, and Jenny Holzer. The ISP occupied numerous venues throughout New York Metropolis till 2023, when it settled in Roy Lichtenstein’s former Greenwich Village residence and studio, which had been gifted to the Whitney. That very same yr, ISP alum Gregg Bordowitz, an artist, author, and activist, was named director.
“The museum’s present intrusion into the academic curriculum and administration of the ISP is unprecedented,” Bordowitz stated in an announcement, as first quoted by Artnet Information. “The museum’s interference within the programming of the ISP is weirdly inconsistent, usually contradictory and capricious. Most unhappy and unfair are the methods the museum directors disregard and disrespect the contributors of the ISP who’ve been wrongly, unfairly, and carelessly positioned in probably the most susceptible positions.
“I assist the ISP contributors,” Bordowitz stated. “They met the aggressive challenges of the museum with thoughtfulness and beauty.”
The Whitney isn’t any stranger to political activism inside or outdoors its partitions. In 2017, the museum staged a present drawn from its everlasting assortment titled “An Incomplete Historical past of Protest.” The present contextualized art-making as an expression of political dissidence inside america, with a deal with how museums grew to become a stage for artist-led activism in response to, amongst extra, America’s army operations in Vietnam, and the Civil Rights motion. Its additionally among the many many New York museums which were protested since October 7, 2023, with artists and activists urging board members and senior management to sever cultural and monetary ties to Israel, and to publicly label the battle in Gaza a genocide. (No museum in New York has accomplished so, as of Could 2025.) In November 2023, the principle entrance of the Whitney was splashed with pretend blood in a protest in opposition to Ken Griffin, a former Whitney board member and Citadel CEO who referred to as for repercussions for pro-Palestine scholar teams and demonstrators. That demonstration coincided with a march for Gaza through which demonstrators tried to journey to the Whitney through the Excessive Line, the suspended public park that passes by the museum, earlier than being blocked by the police.
Professional-Palestine arts and tradition staff made it contained in the Whitney in Could 2024 throughout its “Free Friday Night time” occasion. Contained in the museum foyer, the autonomous group distributed custom-printed brochure within the museum’s stylized branding that detailed the hyperlinks between its funders and sponsors to “genocide and dispossession,” together with Israel’s floor and air assault on Gaza. Protestors additionally overlaid works within the then-on view Whitney Biennial with footage of households in Gaza previous to the Hamas assault on Israel and in the course of the subsequent Israeli response, which has lasted practically 600 days.
In March 2025, the variety of Palestinians killed within the Gaza Strip due to Israel’s actions surpassed 50,000, in accordance with well being authorities in Gaza. This month, the UN’s little one rights company (UNICEF) warned that greater than 9,000 thousand youngsters have been admitted for take care of acute malnutrition because the begin of the battle, and that hundreds extra face imminent hunger because of the blockade of humanitarian help to the coastal enclave.
Chatting with ARTnews on the situation of anonymity, a member of the ISP studio cohort concerned with the efficiency stated that they suppose whether or not museums embrace “militancy will depend on what the militant seems like, and what’s their trigger.”
Of the Whitney and ISP, they added that “solely Palestine issues. If the cancellation drives individuals’s vitality in direction of that trigger, then it’ll have been value it.”
