Supported by a crowd of pro-Palestinian protesters, the American photographer Nan Goldin condemned Israel’s war in Gaza as genocide and attacked what she described as German censorship of critics of Israel in a speech at the opening of her retrospective at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie on Friday evening.
“I decided to use this exhibition as a platform to amplify my position of moral outrage at the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon,” Goldin told the crowd gathered at the Neue Nationalgalerie, some of whom were waving Palestinian flags and banners. “My grandparents escaped the pogroms in Russia. What I see in Gaza reminds me of the pogroms in Russia.”
Protesters chanted slogans such as “Viva, viva Palestina,” drowning out a response by Klaus Biesenbach, the director of the museum. The disruption led to a brief interruption in the proceedings. A friend of Goldin’s for more than 30 years, Biesenbach said he disagreed with her stance on the Middle East, but “I stand for your right to express yourself freely.” In a statement, the Neue Nationalgalerie said it “explicitly distances itself from the statements made by the protesters and emphasises its commitment to freedom of expression, respectful dialogue, and mutual respect.”
Nan Goldin, Self-portrait with eyes turned inward, Boston, (1989), from the series Sisters, Saints and Sybils © Nan Goldin. Courtesy the artist
Goldin, who is Jewish, accused Germany of conflating anti-Zionism and antisemitism. “The word antisemitism has been weaponised,” she said. “It’s lost its meaning. In declaring all criticism against Israel as antisemitic, it makes it harder to define and stop violent hatred against Jews. Meanwhile, Islamophobia is being ignored.”
A number of exhibitions have been cancelled in Germany since the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel and the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza because arts institutions perceived comments by featured artists or curators as antisemitic or anti-Israel. The Academy of Arts warned last year that a fraught political climate has led to “violations of civil liberties that are unacceptable for a democratic country” and warned against “hasty red lines drawn on the basis of political statements by artists.”
Earlier this month, the German Bundestag, or lower chamber of parliament, approved a controversial declaration to combat antisemitism, arguing that against the background of the Holocaust, Germany has a “special responsibility in the fight against antisemitism.” Critics of the declaration mainly point to a passage in the text that calls for public grants for culture and science to be conditional on adherence to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which encompasses, in some instances, criticism of Israel.
“Tongues have been tied, gagged by the government, the police and the cultural crackdown,” said Goldin, whose previous activism has included targeting the opioid epidemic in the US and pressuring museums into removing the name of the Sackler family, whose members have been connected to the crisis. “This is a city we used to consider a refuge,” she said. “Now over 180 artists, writers and teachers have been cancelled since 7 October, some for something as banal as a like on Instagram, many of them Palestinian, 20% of them Jews.”
Nan Goldin, The Hug, New York City (1980), from the series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency © Nan Goldin. Courtesy the artist
Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation—the organisation which oversees Berlin’s state museums including the Neue Nationalgalerie—attacked Goldin’s speech as “intolerable in its one-sidedness.” Claudia Roth, the German culture minister, condemned the protesters’ chants, according to the German press agency DPA. “Such behaviour is absolutely unacceptable and an attack on the museum and cultural work,” DPA quoted her as saying.
Yesterday, the Neue Nationalgalerie held a symposium called “Art and Activism in Times of Polarisation. Discussion Space on the Middle East Conflict”, chaired by the political scientist Saba-Nur Cheema and the historian Meron Mendel. The event took place “without incident” and “in a calm and respectful atmosphere,” the museum said, though some people without tickets were turned away at the entrance.
The exhibition, Nan Goldin. This Will Not End Well, assembles slide-shows and a film portraying Goldin’s life and the lives of her friends and family. It runs until 6 April 2025, and includes The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981-2022), her best-known work, and Sisters, Saints and Sibyls (2004-21), a portrait of her troubled elder sister Barbara, who committed suicide at the age of 19.
