Editor’s Note: The following statement from “Supporters of the Noguchi Museum Staff” calls on Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum Director Amy Hau to end the New York City museum’s ban on staff wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, and to reverse the retaliatory firings of staff. Author Jhumpa Lahiri recently made headlines for refusing the prestigious Isamu Noguchi Award over the museum’s ban.
To learn more and sign a petition to the museum see here.
We are shocked and dismayed by the Noguchi Museum’s decision to ban the wearing of keffiyehs by Museum staff. We stand in solidarity with the over two-thirds of staff who have objected to the keffiyeh ban, and we condemn in the strongest terms the Museum’s retaliatory tactics of intimidation and silencing that have led to the termination of employment for four employees.
Museum Director Amy Hau’s unilateral decision to impose the ban was undertaken in the face of widespread objections from staff across departments. Ensuing attempts at peaceful protest – an internal petition signed by over two-thirds of staff members, a keffiyeh sit-in, and the formation of a rights group, @noguchirights – have been met by forceful retaliation. The Director of Visitor Services, the only Middle Eastern director at the Museum, was fired on 8/29/24, seemingly as a threat against further organization. On 9/4/24, three gallery attendants who refused to remove their keffiyehs were also terminated.
The keffiyeh is a significant form of cultural dress for Palestinians and others across the Middle East and Africa. It is also a potent symbol standing for the rights of the oppressed, the excluded, and the marginalized. It stands for the very same values that Isamu Noguchi championed throughout his life – notably when he voluntarily entered a WWII concentration camp for Japanese Americans that would have closely resembled the conditions many Palestinians have been subjected to for decades. It is thus with great shame that we observe how far the Museum he founded has deviated from his vision of inclusivity and solidarity.
The Museum’s actions give rise to serious apprehension regarding the administration’s sincerity and competence in managing Noguchi’s legacy. Rather than engage with the staff’s positions, we have seen the Museum leadership shut down any discussion, establish an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, and irrationally escalate matters by terminating the employment of members of staff. These actions stand in stark contrast to the Museum’s stated commitment to inclusivity as a core value.
The disingenuous attempt to position the Museum as an apolitical “sanctuary” has served only to alienate staff and the local community. It misrepresents the inextricable entwinement of culture and politics and does a disservice to Noguchi’s work itself. The Museum regularly exhibits Noguchi’s many political pieces, such as the anti-lynching works Birth and Death, the latter of which Noguchi described as a “social protest”; Yellow Landscape, an indictment of anti-Asian hate; and his numerous anti-war works, such as This Tortured Earth and Memorial to the Dead. The hypocrisy of banning the keffiyeh while the Museum continues to capitalize off of Noguchi’s overtly political work is a gross injustice and represents a clear failure to protect and further the artist’s legacy.
Rather than a neutral position, it is obvious that the Museum’s attempt to isolate the keffiyeh as a “political” symbol amounts to a targeted criminalization of Palestinian identity. That a cultural institution should single out a particular culture for exclusion is already profoundly unsettling; that it should do so at a time when the people of that culture are undergoing a brutal genocide, one that has been widely condemned by civil society and international courts of law, is unconscionable. By enacting this blatantly anti-Palestinian policy, the Museum joins a long history of assaults on Palestinian culture across both Israel and the United States, from Israel’s renaming of depopulated Palestinian towns, banning of Palestinian cultural symbols, and ransacking of Palestinian cultural institutions to the widespread censorship of pro-Palestinian culture workers, cancellation of cultural events, and suppression of Palestinian solidarity in the United States.
We thus judge that the Museum’s actions constitute a failure on three counts: a failure to faithfully represent the legacy of Noguchi, a failure to provide a safe and inclusive workspace for staff, and a failure to embody the values of social engagement and solidarity that are the responsibility of all genuine cultural institutions in times of humanitarian and political crisis. In light of the silencing and intimidation of employees, it falls on us as members of the public to ensure that their voices are heard, that the Museum stays true to its founding values, and that it remains an institution that we can cherish and be proud of.
We call for the immediate revocation of the ban, the reversal of disciplinary measures against staff, and a reaffirmation of the Museum’s commitment to social justice as an integral part of Isamu Noguchi’s legacy. Above all, we urge the Museum to join us in standing up for, and not against, the rights of Palestinians and, in solidarity with so many of us here in the United States, in Palestine, and around the world, to proudly proclaim the words of Noguchi: “Thus I willfully became part of humanity uprooted”.
With the deepest concern,
Supporters of the Noguchi Museum Staff
