Three Dozen Artists Showing at MoMA PS1 Sign a Letter Urging the Museum to Sever Its Ties With Controversial Trustees

More than three dozen artists participating in a group show at
MoMA PS1 have signed an open letter to both MoMA director Glenn
Lowry and MoMA PS1 director Kate Fowle demanding that the
institution divorce itself from trustees who have ties to either
private prison companies or a defense contractor that was involved
in the US wars in Iraq.

Among the 37 artists who signed the letter are the Guerilla
Girls. Mona Hatoum, Jon Kessler, Laura Poitras, Michael Rakowitz,
and Martha Rosler. The signatories include about half of the
artists participating in the show, “Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars
1991–2011,” which features more than 300 works by 80
artists based in Iraq and its diaspora, as well as artists
responding to the war from the West.

The artists say in the letter that they are “drawing attention
to the Chairman of MoMA’s Board of Trustees, Leon Black, and his
relationship to Constellis Holdings. Black is co-founder of the
private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which in 2016
acquired Constellis, the rebranded private security firm
Blackwater, notorious for its role in the 2007 Nisour Square
Massacre, when Blackwater guards killed at least 14 Iraqi civilians
and injured many more.”

While the open letter does not mention Larry Fink by name, the
artists said they support fellow artist Phil Collins who withdrew
his piece, baghdad screentests, from the show in support
of activists demanding that Fink, a MoMA trustee, divest himself
from private prison companies. Fink’s company BlackRock is the
second-largest investor in GEO Group and CoreCivic, which operate
private prisons.

“We call on PS1 to stand by its stated mission and, together
with MoMA, take a truly radical position by divesting from any
trustees and sources of funding that profit from the suffering of
others,” the letter read.

Meanwhile, Fink announced today that
his firm would be making future investment decisions with
environmental sustainability as a core principle.

Fink’s annual
letter to CEOs of the world’s largest companies said that
BlackRock would begin to leave certain investments that “present a
high sustainability-related risk,” such as those in coal producers.
Neither MoMA nor BlackRock immediately responded to requests for
comment.

The post Three Dozen Artists Showing at MoMA PS1 Sign a
Letter Urging the Museum to Sever Its Ties With Controversial
Trustees appeared first on artnet News.