• Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Linkedin
  • Share by email

Following protests over private philanthropy at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Probert Dean considers the ties between museums, galleries and rich donors.

Emiliano Zapata fought for land rights. Toussaint L’Ouverture fought against Slavery. Now, Strike MoMA fight for a gallery. It is the most bourgeois case of direct action since the Islington Waitrose boycott in 2017.

On 7th May, Strike MoMA protestors lived up their name and struck the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Their protest doubled as a walking tour, suggesting that one of the appeals of political demonstration might in fact be sightseeing (with that in mind, if anyone wishes to fight the latest catastrophic cuts to arts education, you’ll find me at Cheddar Gorge, quietly chanting to myself so as not to disturb the local wildlife).

But I digress. The Guardian described the protest as ‘Art Under Attack’, not only chickening out on a nostalgic reference to the 90s arts and crafts show, but also giving the story the exact fearmongering slant MoMA’s board of directors would relish.

Strike MoMA is organised by the catchily named ‘International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings’, a name so esoteric that it must be read thrice. Their purpose is to be a focal point for gripes against the gallery, which are numerous, and to imagine for the rest of us what a post-MoMA world might look like... Keep reading on The Mancunion.