Artist Phil Collins Pulls His Work From a MoMA PS1 Show in Protest of a Trustee’s Ties to For-Profit Prisons

The British multimedia artist Phil Collins is withdrawing his
work from a show opening this Sunday at MoMA PS1, “Theater of
Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011,” in protest of a museum donor
who has controversial business ties.

MoMA trustee Laurence Fink is CEO of the investment firm
BlackRock, which owns stakes in the private prison corporations GEO
Group and Core Civic. Activists such as the groups #MoMADivest and
CodePink have accused him of profiting “from war, ICE detention
centers, private prisons, and the climate crisis.”

“In light of recent actions organized by the MoMA/BlackRock
Divest coalition, and information made public by activists and
campaigners, I have decided to remove my work baghdad
screentests from the exhibition,” said a statement from the
artist. “This decision is an expression of solidarity with the
millions of human beings currently held in cages in US prisons and
jails, with their communities and loved ones, and with friends,
colleagues, organizers, and campaign groups working tirelessly to
call out, resist, and counter the social violence perpetuated by
the prison system.”

The video baghdad screentests (2002) riffs on
Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests (1964-66) and
features 40 Baghdad residents silently staring at the camera. The
news of its withdrawal was first reported
by ARTnews. 

In addition to protesting Fink’s ties to for-profit prisons,
activists have also alleged that MoMA uses Fidelity
Investments, which owns stock in these private prison groups, to
manage its pension fund. A MoMA spokesperson told ARTnews
that the museum “does not invest in for-profit private prisons, and
Fidelity does not manage our pension plan.” Asked to specify which
company MoMA uses for its pension fund, the spokesperson said it is
supported by an “investment committee.”

Collins noted that his work deals directly with the impact of
prisons and that this relationship “compels me to speak out in
opposition to the ongoing expansion of the prison industrial
complex,” his statement says. “Prison companies are a part
of the racist, state-sanctioned carceral system of the United
States—the largest jailer in the world—that places a massively
disproportionate number of people of color behind bars, and
decimates communities and individual lives. Even after their
release, people remain confined and punished by invisible
barriers, physical, emotional and economic.”

Protesters have also targeted MoMA board member and hedge-fund
manager Steven Tananbaum over his company’s holdings of Puerto
Rican debt.

“The times we live in are not business as usual,” Collins said.
“Museums and cultural spaces, their collections, exhibitions and
programs, should not be aligned with or funded by investments in
mass incarceration, war profiteering, ecological catastrophe, debt
ownership, devastation, oppression, and the pain of others.”

MoMA PS1 did not immediately respond to request for comment.

The post Artist Phil Collins Pulls His Work From a MoMA PS1
Show in Protest of a Trustee’s Ties to For-Profit Prisons
appeared first on artnet News.