An audio recording of a gathering between Queens Museum workers and management supplied to Hyperallergic reveals opposing views of the museum’s duty to tackle Israel’s ongoing assaults on Gaza. In her dialog with 5 employees who requested the establishment to launch an announcement about Palestine, Director Sally Tallant explains that the museum can’t accomplish that as a result of it “is not able to make political statements.”
The assembly yesterday, November 16, adopted a collective letter signed by 17 Queens Museum workers final month calling on museum management to reckon with its constructing’s historical past because the site of the United Nations 1947 vote to undertake Resolution 181 (II), in accordance to inside emails verified by Hyperallergic. Otherwise referred to as the UN Partition Plan for Palestine, this decision divided Palestine into two Jewish and Arab states when Great Britain’s Palestinian mandate expired. Among many Israelis, this vote continues to be celebrated as the primary legitimization of Israel on the world stage. But for Palestinians, the partition is remembered because the catalyst for the 1948 Nakba (which means “catastrophe” in Arabic) that expelled 700,000 Palestinians from their homeland.
While the Queens Museum has a plaque commemorating that the UN General Assembly met in what was then referred to as the New York City Building, and makes common point out of this on its website, the establishment doesn’t refer to the vote’s influence on Palestinians.
Moreover, a number of staffers who signed onto the collective letter and took part in an October 20 strike in assist of Palestine, who’ve requested to stay nameless, have described an environment of “heightened surveillance” in latest weeks, alleging intimidation by museum management within the type of one-on-one conferences with out their direct supervisors. Per week after the assertion and strike, the museum additionally applied the usage of work telephones for workers, in accordance to staffers. After the employees circulated the collective letter and name to signal on to the strike by way of the museum’s e-mail server, the director replied in an e-mail that such actions have been “violative of Queens Museum policies” together with “anti-harassment” and “solicitation and distribution” on firm time. One worker has additionally resigned from their place, as confirmed by Hyperallergic.
The latest assembly reveals that the cultural establishment continues to refuse to acknowledge how the vote’s legacy nonetheless actively harms Palestinians as we speak. In her response to the employees, who’ve requested to stay nameless, Tallant invokes the establishment’s nonprofit standing in addition to the museum’s bylaws and the American Alliance of Museums’ Code of Ethics.
When workers requested why these bylaws and ethics codes didn’t lengthen to the museum’s 2020 public statement throughout the Black Lives Matter protests, Tallant responded by saying that this announcement was “written as a commitment.”
“We felt that actually as a museum we could do something … very intentionally, which was that we can affect change in our working conditions, our staff, the makeup of our board,” Tallant mentioned.
The employees additionally identified the Queens Museum hosts a meals pantry, an instance of a spotlight on social justice and supporting traditionally marginalized individuals, and argued that the museum has the chance to make tangible motion by contextualizing its plaque commemorating the 1947 vote with extra data. They additionally famous that the establishment has a dwelling land acknowledgment in its constructing and on its website.
However, Tallant reiterated that the Queens Museum “cannot make a statement because of our status as a nonprofit institution, because we’re a museum and it is not our job.”
“Where is our statement on Ukraine? Where is our statement on Congo?” Tallant continues, including that though the museum can’t difficulty an announcement expressing solidarity with Palestine, it could possibly proceed to interact with this difficulty and different so-called political issues by way of its programming.
The Queens Museum has not but responded to Hyperallergic’s request for remark.
Founded in 1972, the Queens Museum is situated in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in one of the ethnically various neighborhoods on this planet, and its mission statement says that the museum strives to be “open, responsive, inclusive, and empathetic.” Tallant, who was beforehand creative director of the Liverpool Biennial within the United Kingdom and head of packages at London’s Serpentine Galleries, was appointed president and govt director of the Queens Museum in 2019.
In late 2017, the museum hosted a controversial reenactment of the UN Partition vote after succumbing to strain from Israeli and New York politicians who accused the museum of antisemitism for initially canceling the occasion. A commemoration of Israel’s 70th anniversary, the occasion adopted former Governor Cuomo’s still-in impact govt order requiring state businesses to divest all public funds from establishments and corporations in assist of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) motion. Former Queens Museum Director Laura Raicovich stepped down from her function within the wake of the controversy, prompting curators, artists, and teachers to signal an open letter in assist of the culturally and politically engaged programming beneath her management.
