Brooklyn Museum and PEN America Accused of “Silence” on Gaza Ceasefire
Activists staged an action at the museum after filmmakers Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster and writers Nikki Giovanni and Doreen St. Félix withdrew from a planned event in protest.
Filmmakers Michèle Stephenson and Joe Brewster and writers Nikki Giovanni and Doreen St. Félix withdrew from a scheduled event at the Brooklyn Museum last Friday, protesting the institution and program partner PEN America’s “refusing to stand in solidarity” with Palestine amid Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza. The event, a screening of Stephenson and Brewster’s Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (2023) followed by a talk with Giovanni and St. Félix, was scheduled to take place at 6:30pm in the Brooklyn Museum’s third-floor auditorium as part of the institution’s First Saturdays programming.
In lieu of the screening and discussion, on Saturday, March 2, a group of activists took to the Brooklyn Museum and discreetly distributed zines to visitors. The black-and-white leaflets, printed with the question “Where is Nikki Giovanni?,” were also covertly placed throughout the museum, such as in the brochure cases for Judy Chicago's installation The Dinner Party (1974–79) and atop display cases in the exhibition Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines.
“How many more Palestinians will die before the Brooklyn Museum breaks its silence?” read the paper leaflets, which encouraged visitors to demand that the museum issue a statement, according to a joint post by Palestinian advocacy collective Museum and Culture Workers Coalition for Palestine (MCWC), Art Against Displacement (AAD), and arts activist group Decentralize Culture. Since Hamas’s October 7 attacks, in which an estimated 695 Israeli civilians were killed, Israeli forces have killed more than 30,228 Palestinians in Gaza and 412 Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel, according to the latest report from the United Nations.
The museum has been the gathering site for several pro-Palestine protests and demonstrations in recent months. In mid-February, 10 pro-Palestine protesters were arrested outside the institution’s Eastern Parkway entrance during a rally organized by Palestinian liberation group Within Our Lifetime (WOL), and one week earlier, museum security aggressively pushed out two organizers circulating flyers inside.
No activists were confronted by building personnel this weekend. Seemingly unaware of the zine distribution action, a Brooklyn Museum spokesperson said in an email to Hyperallergic that “no demonstrations took place on First Saturday,” adding that "no one was removed or asked to leave the building.”
“While we regret the writers' choice to not move ahead with the planned talk, we respect their decision to express their beliefs and perspectives in whatever way they choose,” the spokesperson continued.
In response to Hyperallergic’s request for comment about the event’s cancellation, a representative for PEN America said that the organization respects the artists’ “right to voice their own perspective on the conflict and to respond as their conscience dictates.”
“We mourn the immense loss of Palestinian lives, and the destruction of museums, libraries, and mosques that contribute to a vibrant cultural community,” the PEN spokesperson said, adding that the organization has voiced its “shared anguish for all those whose families were killed or taken hostage.”
Though PEN America has published more than 30 statements since October 7 in response to Israel’s attacks on Palestine, most of these criticize the rise in institutional censorship and suppression of free expression but do not explicitly call for a ceasefire. Filmmaker Michèle Stephenson criticized the organization in a statement on Instagram over the weekend, noting that the nonprofit “stands apart” not only from PEN International, which demanded an “immediate ceasefire” on October 25, but also from its own “moral mission.”
Stephenson also decried what she perceives as the Brooklyn Museum’s double standards pertaining to Gaza, citing the institution’s move to halt its First Saturdays programming in a stance of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement after the police murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020.
Over recent months, organizers have scrutinized the Brooklyn Museum’s corporate relationships over funders' financial links to Israeli weapons manufacturing and settlements in Palestine. MCWC, AAD, and Decentralize Culture’s recent social media post further drew attention to the fact that Brooklyn Museum staff have already made their own call for a ceasefire, published in a November 12 missive asking the institution to make a public statement on Gaza.
“We call on the Brooklyn Museum to break its dangerous silence on the genocide in Palestine by committing to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), divesting from Zionist funding, and honoring the principled demands of artists, staff, and the Brooklyn community it claims to represent,” the organizers of the flyer distribution told Hyperallergic in a statement.
