One particular person was taken into police custody final evening, November 12, at a protest exterior the Museum of Fashionable Artwork (MoMA) through the World Jewish Congress’s (WJC) 2024 Theodor Herzl Award Dinner going down on the establishment
Some 40 folks gathered exterior the museum’s 53rd Road entrance yesterday night in response to a name shared by pro-Palestine advocacy teams, together with Writers Towards the Conflict on Gaza (WAWOG) and Inside Our Lifetime, to protest MoMA Honorary Board Chair Ronald Lauder. The billionaire inheritor to the Estée Lauder fortune can also be the president of the WJC, a federation of Jewish communities and Israel advocates. Based in 1936 to “support the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine,” amongst different goals, the group frequently lobbies on behalf of Israel and has rejected studies introduced to the United Nations alleging that Israel’s ongoing assaults on Gaza represent genocide.
Earlier than the protest started at round 5:30pm, police had sectioned off the establishment’s most important entrance, the place the group crowded round an indication that learn “MoMA Trustees Fund Genocide Apartheid and Settler Colonialism.” Chanting “Free Palestine” and “No justice, no peace,” they known as on MoMA to disaffiliate from “dirty money.”
New York Police Division officers arrange barricades to separate protesters from the museum entrance.
A lady sporting an Israeli flag draped round her shoulders made her approach into the group of protesters round 6:30pm and was escorted out of the group by police seconds later with out the flag. Hyperallergic additionally witnessed an altercation between a suited man and a protester sporting a keffiyeh; the protester, who declined to supply his title, alleged that the person yanked the Palestinian scarf off his neck. A police officer then ushered the suited man inside MoMA.
Author Sarah Nicole Prickett, a WAWOG organizer, was stopped by two law enforcement officials as she was crossing the road between two teams of protesters on each side of the barricaded entrance. She was charged with disorderly conduct, in keeping with a summons observe reviewed by Hyperallergic.
A New York Police Division spokesperson confirmed that one particular person was taken into custody and launched with a summons to look in prison court docket subsequent month.
In an interview with Hyperallergic, Prickett mentioned, “The least we can do is disorder things.”
“We want these institutions to know that they can no longer silently, tacitly, and inconsequentially participate in the death-dealing activities of organizations like the World Jewish Congress,” she mentioned.
MoMA has not replied to Hyperallergic’s request for remark.
Round 40 demonstrators gathered exterior the museum.
The WJC’s Theodor Herzl Award, named after the person credited because the founding father of Zionism, was given this 12 months to United States Ambassador to China and Russia Jon M. Huntsman Jr. as a “devoted friend of Israel and the Jewish people.” Tal Huber, the Israeli graphic designer behind the purple, black, and white “Kidnapped” posters wheat-pasted globally within the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 assault, was additionally honored ultimately evening’s gala with an award for advancing Jewish tradition.
Bobuq Sayed, a New York Metropolis-based author from the Afghan diaspora who participated within the motion, informed Hyperallergic that they had been protesting as a result of “cultural institutions like the MoMA have a responsibility to cultural workers and not to billionaire benefactors.”
Graphic designer Liv Senghor additionally attended the protest as an organizer of the environmental motion group Planet Over Revenue.
“We thought it was important for us to show up as climate protesters to show solidarity and that we understand that all our struggles are connected,” Senghor mentioned.
The New York Police Division introduced in additional limitations after the protest started.
MoMA has been the goal of a number of protest campaigns concentrating on trustees’ hyperlinks to human rights violations, army violence, and environmental harm. In 2021, a 10-week motion collection generally known as Strike MoMA known as on the museum to drop board members together with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and financier Leon Black. Within the wake of strain over his ties to convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein, together with an open letter from artists revealed in Hyperallergic, Black stepped down from his function as board chairman however stays a museum trustee.
The World Jewish Congress has not but responded to a request for remark.
Protesters yelled at individuals who entered the museum. 
Throughout the protest, a person sporting an Israeli flag stepped into the group. 
A Palestinian flag stands out amid a crowd of protesters exterior the museum.
