After Warren Kanders Resignation From Whitney, Museum Boards Ponder Their Futures

After Warren Kanders Resignation From Whitney, Museum Boards Ponder Their Futures

Last week ended on a positive note for protesters and artists committed to forcing the resignation of Warren B. Kanders as vice chair of the board of New York’s Whitney Museum.

Protesters were adamant that his ownership of Safariland, a defense-manufacturing company that supplied state-of-the-art tear gas to quell protesters everywhere in the world disqualified him as any kind of representative of artists opposed to global militarization. Evidence mounted that Kanders’ stake in Sierra Bullets,linked him directly to high-velocity ammunition allegedly used by Israeli soldiers in Gaza against Palestinian civilian protesters.

With Kanders out at the Whitney and no specified game plan on how to move forward, all parties involved from artists to activists, patrons and buyers of art are asking what happens next. ARTnews writes that the Kanders’ resignation is a sign “of the shifting balance between museum boards and their critics, with protesters believing that they have won the day.

Don’t overthink the situation, say many of the critics, who have generally taken a stand against defense contractors and fortunes made from armaments worldwide. The Sackler family also has been the target of protests as they are tied deeply — if not exclusively — as profiteers tied to America’s epidemic drug crisis launched by OxyContin.

Artists Activism Escalates in Full Throttle Stance Against Whitney Vice Chair Warren Kanders

Artists Activism Escalates in Full Throttle Stance Against Whitney Vice Chair Warren Kanders

Eight artists have now withdrawn from the Whitney Biennial over companies linked to Whitney Museum vice chairman Warren Kanders. New evidence this week links Sierra Bullets — a weapons manufacturer partially owned by Kanders -- to violence on the Israeli-Palestinian border in Gaza, reports Hyperallergic.

Safariland, a Jacksonville, Florida–based defense manufacturing company that produces triple chasers, is run by Warren Kanders. Hyperallergic has been active in detailing instances of Safariland products being used in politically fractious situations all over the globe, including the current border conflict running along America’s southern border with Mexico. Safariland specializes in “professional and protective equipment focused on the law enforcement, public safety, military, and recreational markets.”

In 2018, Forbes covered Kanders in a story Meet The Safariland Multimillionaire Getting Rich Off Tear Gas and More in the Defense Industry. Kanders’ involvement in producing tear gas, the chemical weapon of crowd control, is the most important focus on controversy between Kanders and activists worldwide. Kanders describes his company’s offerings as benign, rejecting activism against him personally and Swaziland’s tear gas production. “Whether it’s under Obama—he was fond of using these products very frequently—or under Bush or Clinton or whomever, we are there to make nonlethal products and to provide those products to friends of our government through very prescribed channels,” Kanders told Forbes.

The newest withdrawals from the biennial include the University of London-based research group Forensic Architecture , and their Whitney Biennial submission “Triple-Chaser” (2019). Now Forensic Architecture believes that they MAY — or its highly-likely — have found an unexploded open-tip bullet in the sand in Gaza.

In this link, Forensic Architecture details their investigation into the facts behind “Triple Chaser”, which includes events on the Tijuana-San Diego border.

Rujeko Hockley & Jane Panetta Named Curators Of 2019 Whitney Bienniale

RUJEKO HOCKLEY (LEFT) AND JANE PANETTA. © 2017 SCOTT RUDD. COURTESY OF THE WHITNEY MUSEUM.

Rujeko Hockley & Jane Panetta Named Curators Of 2019 Whitney Bienniale

The Whitney Museum announced Wednesday that Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockley will co-curate the 2019 Whitney Biennial. As current curators of the Whitney’s staff. the two women are “two of the most compelling and engaged curatorial voices of the moment,” according to a statement from the Whitney’s chief curator, Scott Rothkopf.

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Panetta joined the Whitney in 2010 and has curated solo presentations by Willa Nasatir and MacArthur “Genius” Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Hockley, who was came to the museum in March 2017, co-curated the highly acclaimed Brooklyn Museum show “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85.” At the Whitney, she has so far co-curated “Toyin Ojih Odutola: To Wander Determined,” , on view at the Whitney until February 25, 2018, as well as the ongoing group show “An Incomplete History of Protest.”

The news comes at the end of a year marked by intense controversies around cultural appropriation in the art world. Among the most divisive arguments was the public maelstrom around Dana Schutz's painting of Emmett Till, Open Casket. The painting prompted open letters calling for the removal and even destruction of the painting, silent protests in front of the work, and demands that other works ALL of Dana Schutz's paintings be banned from a show in Boston as punishment for her offense of the Emmett Till painting.

2017 Whitney Biennial Curators Lew & Lockshave Stand Firm On 'Open Casket' Controversy

2017 Whitney Biennial Curators Lew & Lockshave Stand Firm On 'Open Casket' Controversy AOC The Wokes

Not in recent memory has a single painting caused such controversy and furor in the contemporary art world as Dana Schutz's 'Open Casket' (2016), part of New York's current Whitney Biennial. The portrait focuses on the disfigured corpse of Emmett Till, murdered in 1955 at age 14 by a Mississippi lynch mob after conflicting stories about whistling -- or 'worse' according to suggestive innuendos in court testimony -- at a white woman. 

The two Biennial creators  Christopher Lew and Mia Lockshave also become the target of criticism, and Artnet New's editor-in-chief Andrew Goldstein spoke to Lew about the controversy.

Fake Letter Requesting Removal Of Dana Schutz' 'Open Casket' Emmett Till Painting Dials Up Protest Temperature

The controversy around artist Dana Schutz' controversial painting 'Open Casket' and the horrific death of Emmett Till continues at the Whitney Biennial. This shocking image above appeared in Google Images and is from former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos' website. 

The debated work is based on a photograph from the funeral of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black American who was murdered in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman. 

Schutz shared her perspective about the painting with ArtNet News, saying:

You’ve said in the Times that you approached the painting as a mother, and as a way to explore a mother’s pain. Would there have been no way to address the subject without, as your critics would have it, appropriating black experience?

It was the feeling of understanding and sharing the pain, the horror. I could never, ever know her experience, but I know what it is to love your child. I don’t know if there would be a way to address the subject without some way of approaching it on a personal level.

Could you have foreseen that you were stepping on a third rail by treating this explosive subject? If so, what made it necessary to paint Emmett Till specifically?
Yes, for many reasons. The anger surrounding this painting is real and I understand that. It’s a problematic painting and I knew that getting into it. I do think that it is better to try to engage something extremely uncomfortable, maybe impossible, and fail, than to not respond at all.

Will the reaction to the painting change anything about your practice in the future?
I’m sure it has to.

On Thursday morning several new outlets including Artsy, Frieze, and Out Magazine published parts or all of an open letter alleged to have been written by the artist Dana Schutz, requesting that the painting be removed from the exhibition. Shortly after, the letter addressed to Whitney Biennial 2017 co-curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks was declared to be a fake by  Stephen Soba, the Whitney Museum’s director of communications.

Queer artist Parker Bright has maintained a vigil in front of the painting, blocking its view. Bright met with Lew and Locks to express his views, and he was assured that Schutz would not sell the painting or profit from it in any way, writes Out.

Artist Hannah Black sent a letter earlier in the week to the curators, requesting that the painting be moved and destroyed. AOC will revisit this story after digesting a number of essays and thoughtful pieces about the controversy.

Read AOC's original story, including the full text of Black's letter to the Whitney and new details around Emmett Till's death: Dana Schutz' Painting Of Emmett Till Creates Controversy At Whitney Biennial 2017 AOC The Wokes

Dana Schutz' Painting Of Emmett Till Creates Controversy At Whitney Biennial 2017

Dana Schutz' Painting Of Emmett Till Creates Controversy At Whitney Biennial 2017