21 Events That Defined the Art World Response to Israel’s War in Gaza

A war of letters kicks off

Well-known members of the art world responded almost the October 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent air strikes in Gaza—some in the form of widely read letter calling for a ceasefire, others in a separate missive that urged “empathy” for those killed and taken hostage by Hamas. After circulating online, the first letter was published by Artforum, where it was accompanied by an image of a work by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir, and the second letter existed as a Google Document.

Contrasts between the two letters were immediately apparent. The ceasefire letter was signed mainly by artists and did not initially mention the Hamas attack; the so-called “empathy” letter was signed mainly by high-profile figures in the market and did not explicitly mention Israel’s military action in Gaza. As both letters gained more and more attention, a gaping hole in the art world’s social fabric opened up. In the months afterward, the schism that would only continue to widen.

Artforum fires its editor after the publication of a ceasefire letter

A little more than a week after a widely read letter calling for a ceasefire was published on Artforum’s website, editor David Velasco was fired by the publication. “I’m disappointed that a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure,” he told the New York Times. After he was fired, several Artforum editors departed, and artists such as Nan Goldin and Nicole Eisenman said they would no longer work with the publication. Meanwhile, the magazine’s publishers said the letter was posted “without our, or the requisite senior members of the editorial team’s, prior knowledge,” and that doing so was “not consistent with Artforum’s editorial process.”

An ancient Greek Orthodox church in Gaza weathers Israeli airstrikes

The Church of Saint Porphyrius, a Greek Orthodox church built in the 5th century CE, counts as one of Gaza’s oldest and most important cultural sites—and it very nearly did not survive this conflict. On October 19, 2023, it was hit by the Israel Defense Forces during an airstrike that killed 18 Palestinians. The church survived both that airstrike and a second one by the IDF in April 2024, and after the second one, the IDF said the structure was not the intended target. Activist groups were alarmed no less, with Justice For All, a human rights group, calling the second strike a “war crime” in a legal filing with the International Criminal Court, which subsequently called for an investigation to be opened.

Artists protest US support of Israel

In November 2023, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives put forward a bill that would direct billions of dollars toward Israel’s defense systems, spurring widespread concerns about US support of Israel during its war in Gaza. Naturally, artists got involved. The first and most high-profile protest of this took place in the American capital of Washington, D.C., where Nicholas Galanin and Meritt Johnson called for the removal of a sculpture they had contributed to a survey of Native American contemporary art. “It is with deep regret that we must ask for our work be removed from the National Gallery due to US government funding of Israel’s military assault and genocide against the Palestinian people,” the artists wrote on social media.

A Swiss museums director is put in the hot seat for signing a ceasefire letter

Everyone pored over the list of signatories for each letter about Israel and Palestine, and that much became apparent when Mohamed Almusibli was named director of the Kunsthalle Basel, a star-making contemporary art museum in Switzerland, in November 2023. Almost immediately, Almusibli’s appointment set off bilious reports in the Swiss press, which said that his signature on a ceasefire letter published by Artforum showed that he “condemns Israel.” Almusibli was forced to defend himself. “I have to acknowledge that I have provoked accusations that are decidedly not in line with my opinion,” he told one Swiss publication, noting that he had “deep concern on all sides with the current suffering in the Middle East.” A range of artists and dealers subsequently signed a letter in support of Almusibli, who remains the Kunsthalle Basel’s director.

Lisson Gallery “effectively cancels” an Ai Weiwei show

Ai Weiwei, one of the most well-known artists in the world, had a scuffle with his gallery, Lisson, after one of his past tweets about Israel came to light. “The sense of guilt around the persecution of the Jewish people has been, at times, transferred to offset the Arab world,” he wrote in that since-deleted post. “Financially, culturally, and in terms of media influence, the Jewish community has had a significant presence in the United States.” After screenshots of the tweet circulated, Lisson called off a planned Ai show, saying that there was “no place for debate that can be characterised as anti-Semitic or Islamophobic at a time when all efforts should be on ending the tragic suffering in Israeli and Palestinian territories, as well as in communities internationally.” Ai, for his part, responded with a statement in which he affirmed the value of free speech.

Gaza’s art scene bears witness to destruction

As Israel continued to strike Gaza, a range of structures, from hospitals to homes, faced widespread damage. The city’s art scene was not immune, with several key spaces reduced to rubble. Foremost among them was Eltiqa, a gallery–cum–art collective that figured in the 2022 edition of Documenta. The Question of Funding, a Palestinian artists’ collective, said that Eltiqa had been “bombed and destroyed by Israeli forces.” Moreover, the collective said, the artists who ran the gallery were “sad to know that their artworks have been burnt, but they also asked what is meaning of art now? Aren’t peoples’ lives far more important?”

Documenta’s selection committee resigns en masse

Even before 2023, Documenta, Germany’s foremost recurring art exhibition, had been roiled by controversy over its 2022 edition, which featured multiple works critical of Israel that politicians said were antisemitic. With that scandal hanging in the background, the selection committee got to work on the process of choosing an artistic director for Documenta’s next edition, in 2027—and then was quickly upended by Israel’s war. Israeli artist Bracha L. Ettinger was the first committee member to go, citing the situation in her homeland. Then there was scrutiny paid to Indian writer Ranjit Hoskote, whom many accused of supporting the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, something Documenta said was “anti-Semitic.” He, too, left, writing of a “toxic atmosphere” at Documenta.

And then, finally, there were the committee’s remaining four members: Simon Njami, Gong Yan, Kathrin Rhomberg, and María Inés Rodríguez. They, too, quit in November 2023, bitterly denouncing the “emotional and intellectual climate of over-simplification of complex realities and its resulting restrictive limitations” in their resignation letter. More than a year later, the 2027 edition finally ended up with a fresh selection committee and an artistic director, though it was clear by that point that even Documenta, one of the art world’s most beloved and storied art exhibitions, had been shaken to its core by the war in Gaza.

A Candice Breitz show in Germany is called off

There were many, many times in the past year and a half that opportunities were stripped from artists as a result of pro-Palestinian statements or activism, but none provoked quite as much ire as the time in November 2023 that a German museum canceled a presentation of a video by the South African–born artist Candice Breitz. The cancelation looked particularly odd from afar: Breitz, a well-known artist within Berlin, where she is based, is Jewish, and had called for a ceasefire in Gaza while also condemning Hamas’s actions. Yet these “controversial statements,” as the Saarland Museum’s Modern Gallery called them, were enough to merit the cancelation of her show. She described the cancelation as “deeply antisemitic,” writing that it “casts Germans in a position of judgment over what Jewish people may say and/or think, without allowance for due process, let alone civil conversation. This is very much how Kangaroo Courts work.”

Wanda Nanibush departs the Art Gallery of Ontario after posts about Israel

In November 2023, Anishinaabe curator Wanda Nanibush, a well-regarded expert on contemporary Indigenous art, departed Canada’s Art Gallery of Ontario. Reports in the Canadian press revealed that, the month before, the Israel Museum and Arts, Canada had written a letter to AGO director Stephan Jost, complaining that Nanibush had post “inflammatory, inaccurate rants against Israel” to social media and accusing her of hate speech. As word of Nanibush’s departure made it out into the world, famed Indigenous artists signed a letter in which they voiced concerns about the AGO’s commitment to its own policies on decolonization. Though the exact details of Nanibush’s departure are still coming into focus, the Walrus recently published a profile of her in which she said, “I think I always knew that if I have to quit or be fired for making a moral choice, I would.”

A Samia Halaby survey is canceled in Indiana

Samia Halaby ranks among the most celebrated Palestinian artists of all time, with a special mention awarded to her at the 2024 Venice Biennale. But not even her reputation could insulate her from a widespread crackdown that saw Palestinian artists deprived of opportunities worldwide. In December 2023, Halaby was informed that a survey of her work being mounted at Indiana University was canceled by the school, which reportedly cited “safety concerns.” The school had once awarded Halaby an MFA, and she saw something amiss with its reasoning. “As a Palestinian and woman artist practicing in the United States,” she wrote in a letter, “I am not a stranger to racism and sexism of the art world.”

Activists protest Hamas at Tate Modern

Museums became platforms for protest during this conflict, and while much of these demonstrations called for Palestinian liberation, at least one notable action centered around denouncing Hamas’s actions. In January 2024, feminist activists took to London’s Tate Modern, where they protested what the organizers described as the “silence and complicity of the international feminist community in the face of the mass rape of women and girls by Hamas.” The protest began outside an event that featured feminist groups such as Guerrilla Girls and Pussy Riot and ended in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, where the activists stood silently.

Pace Gallery is vandalized with pro-Palestine messages

Between December 2023 and January 2024, several New York art spaces were vandalized with pro-Palestine messages. The most notable vandalism took place at Pace Gallery, which faced controversy in the run-up to a show by Israeli artist Michal Rovner. On Instagram, Pace had posted a 2023 video by Rovner that made a plea for the return of the hostages held by Hamas; the caption for it initially did not include mention of the widespread death in Gaza, but Pace later edited the post after debate in the comments. With posters featuring words such as “Zionist” and “genocide” pasted to the gallery’s facade, Pace closed for the day. Yet the protests did not end there. In March, during the opening for Rovner’s show, protesters spread fabric petals around the gallery, a reference to the poppies that are commonly associated with Palestine.

Tania Bruguera cuts a Berlin performance short amid protests

As the mood in Germany continued to grow even more tense, Cuban artist Tania Bruguera staged a 100-hour performance at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof in February 2024 that involved reading a text by the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt. Yet Bruguera and her performers never got to the end of the text because the artist was personally confronted by protestors. These attendees claimed that Bruguera had platformed Zionists and failed to include Palestinians among her readers, something that she fiercely rebutted by noting her prior support for Palestine. The museum accused the protestors of hurling “violent hate speech” at her, and Hermann Parzinger, the leader of the organization that facilitates the Hamburger Bahnhof, claimed these demonstrators were guilty of “evil anti-Semitism.”

Artists remove their work from London’s Barbican Centre

In February 2024, London’s Barbican Centre faced widespread condemnation after it nixed a planned London Review of Books talk with writer Pankaj Mishra that was titled “The Shoah after Gaza.” The fallout continued into March, when four acclaimed artists—Diedrick Brackens, Yto Barrada, Mounira al Solh, and Cian Dayrit—and one collector pulled their works from a show about textiles. “We cannot take seriously a public institution that does not hold a space for free thinking and debate, however challenging it might feel to some staff, board members, or anxious politicians,” Barrada said at the time. The show went on as planned, but protests continued.

A French art patron decries “wokeism” over a show about Palestine

The Palais de Tokyo, the top contemporary art museum in Paris, gained widespread attention when one of its patrons, Sandra Hegedüs, said she would no longer financially support the institution, which had recently mounted a show that centered around a historical exhibition of Palestinian art in Beirut. Hegedüs—a “proud Zionist,” according to her X bio—wrote that the show featured “racist, violent, and antisemitic remarks,” and decried a larger culture of “wokeism” in the Palais de Tokyo’s programming. In response, director Guillaume Désanges said the museum “reaffirms its solidarity with all the populations who have fallen victim to this tragic situation, condemns acts of terrorism and antisemitism, and calls for a lasting peace, a ceasefire in Gaza, and the liberation of all hostages.”

Israel’s Venice Biennale pavilion closes to the public

Months of controversy preceded the opening of the 2024 Venice Biennale, with activists and artists repeatedly calling on the exhibition to oust Israel’s “genocidal” pavilion from this edition. Right up until opening day in April, it seemed as though the Israel Pavilion would ultimately open as planned. Then, that morning, Biennale attendees awoke to news that artist Ruth Patir had shuttered her pavilion, saying that she planned to keep it closed until there was a ceasefire and a hostage release deal. Neither happened before the Biennale’s end in November, and so the pavilion remained closed for the entire run of the exhibition.

Activists tag the Brooklyn Museum director’s home with anti-Zionist graffiti

The Brooklyn Museum was a recurring target of protests during this conflict, with writers and activists repeatedly denouncing the institution’s apparent silence when it came to issuing a statement in support of Palestine. With a sizable protest having taken to the museum in May 2024, activists then tagged the homes of the museum’s director, Anne Pasternak, and several of the institution’s board members. A banner tied to the entrance of Pasternak’s home read: “ANNE PASTERNAK / BROOKLYN MUSEUM / WHITE-SUPREMACIST ZIONIST.” Eric Adams, the city’s Mayor, said that the vandalism was “unacceptable antisemitism” and apologized to Pasternak, who is Jewish. Three people were charged in November with counts that included making a terroristic threat as a hate crime.

New York’s Noguchi Museum fires workers for wearing keffiyehs

Keffiyehs, traditional Arabic garments that often signify support for Palestinian culture, landed repeatedly at the center of scandals in museums last year, nowhere more controversially than the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York. That institution fired several workers over the summer of 2024, claiming that in donning keffiyehs on the job, they had violated a policy that forbids “political dress.” Protests sprang up after word of the firings hit the press, and Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer-prize winning poet, said she would no longer accept an award given out by the Noguchi Museum as a result of the news.

Pro-Palestine activists target a famed Picasso painting

London’s National Gallery has become a hotbed of climate-related actions over the past few years. In October, however, the museum witnessed a different kind of protest when activists pasted an image of a Gazan mother and child onto the protective glass of a Picasso’s 1901 painting Motherhood. The protestors, who were part of a group called Youth Demand, were seeking a two-way arms embargo with Israel. Ultimately, two activists were arrested, and no damage was done to the painting.

Nan Goldin delivers an impassioned address on Palestine in Berlin

Few artists were more outspoken about Palestine during this conflict than the photographer Nan Goldin, who got arrested at a demonstration in support of Gaza and even canceled a project with the New York Times as a protest of the newspaper’s “complicity” in Israel’s war. That led to a good deal of scrutiny in Germany when a traveling survey of her work made a stop at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie last fall. Never one to pull any punches, Goldin bitterly denounced Germany for its “weaponization of antisemitism” in a speech given at her opening, where she said the country had “ignored” Palestinian suffering.

“The ICC is talking about genocide,” she said. “The UN is talking about genocide. Even the Pope is talking about genocide. Yet we’re not supposed to talk about this as genocide. Are you afraid to hear this, Germany?” Not long after she spoke, Neue Nationalgalerie director Klaus Biesenbach took the stage to rebut her. “For us,” he said, “Israel’s right to exist is beyond question.” As protestors shouted him down, he went on to note that he and the institution’s other leaders “sympathize” with those in Gaza and Lebanon.”