As the world watches the rising death toll in Israel and Gaza with horror, opinions and outcries abound. From college campuses and kitchen tables, street protests to art museums, stances are varied and divisive. The elite community of arts professionals is among those grappling with these new moral crises, as dealers, buyers, writers, and institutions struggle to find a unified voice.
For manyi American Jews and Christians, ties to Israel are undeniable, and this remains true in the arts in the wake of Hamas’ attacks. The New York-based Mugrabi family recently funded the Einstein Museum in Jerusalem, and Amalia Dayan of Madison Avenue staple Levy Gorvy Dayan (LGD, formerly LGDR) is also Israeli. As such, noteworthy and influential art world actors have released statements decrying the conflict in support of the Jewish state.
Ukrainian-American writer Katya Kazakina was one of the first to question museums who did not call out Hamas in the wake of the catalystic violence in Israel on October 7th in her column ‘Where Are You People’ on October 12th. She subsequently addressed the challenges of evacuating priceless works of modern and contemporary art from the region.
Evan Beard of Masterworks and Level & Co posted his thoughts in favor of Israel on Instagram, as did a number of private art dealers with ties to the region.
Beard, who has a military background, wrote, “Israel has no choice but to pursue the complete and total obliteration of Hamas. Israel will be successful…I stand in solidarity with Israel in this endeavor.”
Many art world players do not share Beard’s view, however. On October 19th, AN OPEN LETTER FROM THE ART COMMUNITY TO CULTURAL ORGANIZATIONS was published in Artforum and reshared by Hyperallergic and ArtLeaks in “support” of “Palestinian liberation”, calling for a ceasefire and aligning with global humanitarian organizations demanding aid to the blockaded zone.
“Silence at this urgent time of crisis and escalating genocide is not a politically neutral position,” the letter states.
It has 8,000 signatures, including many Jewish American players.
But the ripple effect was intense, not just among collectors looking for their artists, but in the publishing world itself. Israeli art publication Erev Rav condemned the letter for its omission of the violence that began in Israel, and the initial letter was amended in the footnotes to acknowledge it.
“By ignoring the rights of all who live in Israel, It is as if those who signed the letter are dehumanizing all of those who live in Israel, the 9 million people who have a right to exist” Erev Rav’s rebuttal says. “It’s vital to acknowledge the suffering of everyone rather than adhering to extremist fundamentalist ideologies, which have brought us to this harrowing point in time.”
“Art fosters discussion and meaningful engagement within and between cultures—and has always provided a powerful form of interpretation when other means of expression have failed,” wrote the LGD team in another letter, also published in Artforum.
Then the Artforum editor who oversaw the letter’s printing, David Velasco, was terminated shortly afterwards. He had worked for the publication since 2005, and this sparked four additional editors to resign and make international headlines once again.
But still others align unabashedly with the Palestinian resistance movement. Ganzeer, the moniker of the Egyptian artist known best for his street work during the 2011 revolution, has made a number of works denouncing violence in Gaza. He posted “Decolonize Your Mind” on his Instagram, using the Hebrew, Arabic, and English for ‘No’ on many of his designs. On his blog, Ganzeer.today, he added his broader thoughts, in which he sees the Israel conflict as a question of authoritarianism and power mongering.
“Any way you look at it, none of what’s been going on is actually about ‘the Jews’ or Palestinians at all, who are the biggest victims in a big game of geopolitik centered around—not race, faith, or ethnicity as they’ll have you believe—but in fact revolves entirely around money.”
Whether these diverse takes will have an impact on collecting behavior is as of yet unclear.
