The homes of the Brooklyn Museum’s director, Anne Pasternak, its president and COO, Kimberly Panicek Trueblood (whose husband is Jewish), and two trustees were targeted on early Wednesday morning in a coordinated antisemitic attack.
The entrance to Paternak’s Brooklyn Heights apartment was smeared with red paint and graffiti, while a banner was hung accusing her of being a ‘white-supremacist Zionist’. Security cameras captured five masked people entering the courtyard of Paternak’s building at 2:30 am who then proceeded to quickly smear red paint across the property and stencil texts such as ‘Blood On Your Hands’ on the pavement. Police have now initiated an investigation.
Paternak, who is Jewish, said in a statement: ‘For two centuries, the Brooklyn Museum has worked to foster mutual understanding through art and culture, and we have always supported peaceful protest and open, respectful dialogue,’ she said in a later statement. ‘Violence, vandalism and intimidation have no place in that discourse.’
The Brooklyn Museum has become a gathering point for pro-Palestine demonstrations in which activists have claimed links between museum trustees and Israel’s military-industrial complex, claims the museum has denied. Last week, Within Our Lifetime, a pro-Palestine organisation, staged a protest at the Brooklyn Museum in which activists infilitrated the museum and several participants were arrested by police.
In a statement, WOL asserted that ‘Despite [the Brooklyn Museum’s] claim to be a “progressive” cultural institution, we know that through its leadership, trustees, corporate sponsors and donors, this museum is deeply invested in and complicit in the ongoing colonisation, ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.’
