MoMA quickly hangs art from Trump travel ban countries
In response to the Trump administration’s monumentally cruel immigrant travel ban, the Museum of Modern Art in NYC has retooled its galleries to hang art by artists from countries affected by the ban, noting that if those artists are currently out of the country, they wouldn’t even be able to come to see their works in one of the world’s best art museums.
In one of the strongest protests yet by a major cultural institution, the museum has reconfigured its fifth-floor permanent-collection galleries — interrupting its narrative of Western Modernism, from Cezanne through World War II — to showcase contemporary art from Iran, Iraq and Sudan, whose citizens are subject to the ban. A Picasso came down. Matisse, down. Ensor, Boccioni, Picabia, Burri: They made way for artists who, if they are alive and abroad, cannot see their work in the museum’s most august galleries. (A work from a Syrian artist has been added to the film program. The other affected countries are Somalia, Yemen and Libya.)
The works will be up for several months, and alongside each painting, sculpture, or photograph is a text that makes no bones about why it has suddenly surfaced: “This work is by an artist from a nation whose citizens are being denied entry into the United States, according to a presidential executive order issued on January 27, 2017. This is one of several such artworks from the Museum’s collection installed throughout the fifth-floor galleries to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to this Museum, as they are to the United States.”
The travel ban is currently not being enforced due to a temporary restraining order…hopefully that will hold up indefinitely.
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