Whitney Museum Suspends Program After Dispute Over Gaza Event
After a clash between students who attempted to stage performance art in support of the Palestinian cause and administrators who said the event would have violated the institution's anti-harassment policies, the Whitney Museum of American Art said on Monday that it was suspending its Independent Study Program.
The program, which will not accept students next academic year, had built a reputation over more than 50 years for cultivating some of the biggest names in contemporary art, including artists like Andrea Fraser, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Jenny Holzer. The Whitney said it expected to bring the program back for the 2026-27 academic year.
In a statement about the suspension, the director of the New York museum, Scott Rothkopf, cited a 'gap in leadership' and how 'recent developments have underscored the need to further consider the nature of the relationship between the program and the museum.'
Students, alumni and some administrators of the study program had criticized the museum's decision in May to cancel a student performance about the plight of Palestinians called ''No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom': Mourning, Militancy and Performance.' Museum officials said a previous version of the event, staged in New York last year by the Poetry Project, included an artist telling audience members to leave if they supported Israel, which would have violated the Whitney's anti-harassment policies.
'There's no instance when we would find it acceptable to single out members of our community based on their belief system and ask them to leave an exhibition or performance,' Ashley Reese, the museum's director of communications, said in a statement. She added that the museum also believed that a monologue 'valorized specific acts of violence' by Hamas, pointing to a description of a Palestinian bulldozer breaking apart a fence.
'The Whitney will continue to support difficult and provocative discussion of important events and social issues,' she said.
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