The Whitney Museum of American Art. Photograph by Tim Schenck, courtesy of the Whitney.
I understand greatly why some feel the need to boycott and stand against the incoming president. And art is all about expressing ones feelings and opinions. But I don’t see what the closing of museums and galleries do to send a message and I am glad to see the direction taken by some of our countries finest art houses.
Major museums have resisted the call to shutter their doors for the day. “We’re actually going to do the opposite,” Weinberg said during his remarks. “We’re going to make the museum free—pay what you wish—all day Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.” Along with relaxing the admission charge (normally $22 for an adult), the Whitney will host guided tours and discussion groups that use the collection as a way to parse American identity and issues. Most notably, the arts collective Occupy Museums has organized “Speak Out on Inauguration Day,” a program in the museum that will feature writers, activists, and artists from Dread Scott to Martha Rosler to the Guerrilla Girls, who will “affirm their values in response to the current political climate.”
The Whitney is not alone in opting for broader access and dialogue over closure on January 20th. The New Museum will also be pay-what-you-wish, while the Brooklyn Museum, which is always pay-what-you-wish, has lined up a marathon reading of Langston Hughes’s 1935 poem about the American dream, “Let America Be America Again.” But at some of Manhattan’s marquee cultural institutions that prefer to claim an apolitical status, like the Met and MoMA, calls for a J20 strike have been met largely with silence.