More than 100 activists and artists affiliated with community groups from throughout the city gathered at the Brooklyn Museum this morning to protest its hosting of the 2015 Brooklyn Real Estate Summit. Beginning at 7:30am, protesters were stationed at the Washington Avenue entrance to the museum’s parking lot — through which most summit attendees and speakers arrived — and on Eastern Parkway in front of the museum.
Anti-Gentrification Activists Protest Real Estate Summit at Brooklyn Museum
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On November 17, the Brooklyn Museum will host the sixth annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit, a gathering of more than 600 of the biggest players in Brooklyn’s real estate market who will seek to answer questions including “Which emerging areas are primed for transformation?” and “How can investors take advantage of demographic changes?” Now, less than two weeks before the event, the museum is facing growing backlash from those who find the decision by an arts institution to rent its space to those who contribute to mass displacement within NYC neighborhoods — including those of artist communities, as recent events have emphasized — hypocritical and reprehensible.
Artists Denounce Brooklyn Museum for Hosting Real Estate Summit
“Gentrification in progress,” read the tape, its black type printed on yellow strips as all good warnings are. The tape was wrapped repeatedly around a group of trees in front of the Brooklyn Museum, forming a barrier that greeted anyone emerging from the Eastern Parkway subway stop. People clustered near the tape, holding signs similarly printed in black-on-yellow: “Housing for All,” “Foreclose on Developers Not People,” “DoubleCrossing Brooklyn.”
Decrying Real Estate Summit, Artists Stage Demonstration Outside Brooklyn Museum
Amanda Browder’s “Spectral Locus” covers the exterior of Richmond Ferry Church in Buffalo, NY. It’s part of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s Public Art Initiative. (photo courtesy Richmond Ferry Church)
Agitprop! ought to be an outstanding exhibition of politically engaged art. A feverish amalgam of historic and contemporary artwork, the exhibition is undermined by an ambitious but poorly executed curatorial strategy.
Brooklyn Museum’s Activist Art Show Is a Messy Collision of Curation and Politics
(via Brooklyn Museum Goes Free for Those Under 20)
Starting September 3, the Brooklyn Museum will be free for visitors under 20, while the suggested general admission fees for adults will go up to $16 (previously $12), and $10 (previously $8) for adults 62+ and students with valid ID.
Last September, Arnold Lehman announced that he would retire from his position as the director of the Brooklyn Museum. The news was big: Lehman had been at the helm since 1997, and over the course of those 17-plus years, he reshaped the institution in his image in many ways.
On Leaving the Brooklyn Museum After 17 Years: An Interview with Arnold Lehman
We received the following image in our inbox from a reader who spotted this a few weeks ago. It’s a flier created in response to the Brooklyn Museum’s decision to cancel the Art in the Streets street art/graffiti/skateboarding exhibition next year “due to the current financial climate”:
I live … across the street from the Brooklyn Museum. I was just cleaning out a pile of papers on my desk and saw this flyer I had saved. A few weeks ago I was walking my dog on Eastern Parkway and saw these fliers all up and down the stretch in front of the museum. I support my neighborhood musuem, but thought you guys might be interested in a snapshot before I threw it out.
This evening the Brooklyn Museum revealed that Anne Pasternak will succeed Arnold Lehman as the institution’s director. Pasternak has been the president and artistic director of Creative Time, the nonprofit known for presenting major art commissions in unconventional spaces, since 1994.
Creative Time’s Anne Pasternak Will Take the Helm at the Brooklyn Museum
