The prime minister’s address is available here: →.
The public statement is available here: →.
Contemporary art institutions can simultaneously celebrate politically correct agendas and guarantee that the wider political power structure (along with its antagonisms) stays intact. Let us recall the reopening of MoMA in late 2019, when protesters pointed out that the $450 million investment in renovation and expansion of the museum was endorsed by two very problematic board members. Steven Tananbaum’s company GoldenTree Asset Management controls over $2.5 billion of Puerto Rico’s debt. Board member Larry Fink, CEO of investment management company BlackRock, was scrutinized for his company’s investments in private prison companies. For more information on MoMA’s problematic sources of financing, see the website of a new coalition of activists targeting MoMA: Strikemoma.org.
Before the opening of the renewed and enlarged and diverse MoMA, the employees of the museum protested because of their precarious status within their institution. I believe this is a lovely illustration of how relations of capitalist exploitation can go hand in hand with absolute political correctness and museum diversity politics.
Boris Groys, In the Flow (Verso, 2017), 54.
I am, of course, fully aware that sponsors, donors, and board members of big art institutions dictate museums’ programming as well. This is also something that needs to be addressed and taken into account.
Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft) (1790; Cambridge University Press, 2000), 98.