On Wednesday morning, Anne Pasternak, the director of the Brooklyn Museum, awoke to find that the front of her co-op building had been defaced with red paint and accusations — attacks inscribed on a large banner — calling her “a white supremacist Zionist.” Trustees and the museum’s president also found their morning colored by similar angry disparagements in front of their own apartments.
These apparently coordinated attacks came nearly two weeks after 34 people were arrested at a pro-Palestine rally in front of the museum.
Protesters, who assaulted security staff and damaged artwork displayed in the plaza outside, were calling for Israeli divestment from a museum facing budget cuts and lumbering along with an endowment smaller than, say, Harvard’s by a factor of 407.
Seven months ago, the museum was criticized not for a sympathetic view toward Israel but instead for antisemitic leanings.
The turmoil in which so many universities and cultural institutions were now engulfed was playing out at the museum as whiplash.
Persons:
Anne Pasternak, Chuck Schumer, ’, ”
Organizations:
Brooklyn Museum, ”, Palestine, Protesters
Locations:
Israel, Palestine