Artist ‘Interrupted’ Whitney Museum’s Displays with Pro-Palestine Messages

Last week, Whitney Museum displays that advertised the current Whitney Biennial briefly bore unsanctioned messages in support of Palestine, courtesy the artist Jonathan Allen.

According to the Forward, on July 3, Allen placed translucent vinyl stickers on certain displays at the New York museum. Part of his “Interruptions” series, these vinyls called attention to Israel’s military actions in Gaza.

“The Israeli military forces have deliberately targeted and killed Palestinian children,” read one vinyl that contained these words against crimson scrawls recalling bloodshed. Another read, “If you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.”

“I think it’s important artists take risks and use private property and unconventional spaces towards political and social ends,” Allen told the Forward.

The vinyls were removed not long after Allen put them up, according to the Forward report. A Whitney spokesperson told the publication, “The Museum maintains a zero-tolerance policy for vandalism, harassment, discrimination, or bias of any kind.” (Allen told the Forward that his vinyls were “temporary vandalism, technically,” in that they could be easily taken away, without damaging the surfaces underneath.)

Allen’s “Interruptions” at the Whitney loosely recall the controversy that swirled around the museum’s Independent Study Program, which was temporarily paused last year after the institution canceled an ISP-run performance by Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi that, in a prior iteration, had called on audience members to leave the room if they “believe in Israel in any incarnation.” Some viewed the performance’s cancelation as a form of censorship, though the museum denied that the work’s political content was the issue. Instead, the museum claimed, the problem was that the artists “valorized specific acts of violence and imagery of violence.”