Pro-Palestinian Protests Roil Art Schools and Institutions Across the United States

As the Israel-Hamas war continues, protesters havecontinuedto spill into the atriums and campuses of museums and art-education institutions across the country denouncing the conflict and calling for a ceasefire. TheArt Newspaperreports that students at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute have since March 7 been holding weekly sit-ins in protest of the war, while across the river, in Manhattan, students at Cooper Union in April coordinated a picket line, greeting new students participating in the school’s attendance day with banners and signs condemning the conflict. That same month, faculty and staff the California Institute of the Arts in Santa Clarita and students at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles launched campaigns in support of Palestine. On April 25, students at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology set up an encampment in the school’s lobby before moving to an outdoor area on the school’s urban campus. A day later, students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) staged a walkout and rally in support of Palestine.

The first week of May has seen no abatement of action, though it has seen multiple arrests. On May 1, roughly sixty students at the Savannah College of Art and Design staged awalkout and rallycalling for a ceasefire and for the college to divest from Israeli companies. The next day,Hyperallergicreports, about twenty students at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan staged a sit-in with the goal of getting the school to divest from Israeli weapons concerns and for its president to publicly denounce Israel’s actions. On May 3, more than forty protesters at New York’s Parsons School of Design were arrested after the school called on police to dismantle student encampments on its campus. That night,Hyperallergicreports, a group of roughly a hundred demonstrators infiltrated the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, playing through portable speakers the sounds of airplanes dropping bombs and people screaming; surreptitiously projecting video of families in Gaza before and after the events of October 7; and passing out press releases headlined “Whitney Genocide.” On Saturday, May 4, dozens of pro-Palestine protesters affiliated with the People’s Art Institute, a group organized by students at SAIC, were arrested while demonstrating at an encampment outside the Art Institute of Chicago, according toArt News. That night, theLA Timesreports, some twenty UCLA faculty members protested outside the UCLA Hammer Museum’s gala demanding amnesty for pro-Palestinian students arrested on campus earlier in the week, and calling for the immediate resignation of the school’s chancellor.

As of May 6, according to the health ministry in Gaza, more than 34,700 residents have been killed in Israel’s assault on the region, launched in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli soil in which 1,200 were killed and 250 taken hostage. Reuters today reported that Hamas said it had accepted a proposal of a ceasefire offered by mediators from Egypt and Qatar. The outlet quoted Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as saying, “We hope that Israel will commit to stopping the aggression and completely withdraw from the Gaza Strip,” and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying, “The war cabinet unanimously decided that Israel continue the operation in Rafah to exert military pressure on Hamas in order to advance the release of our hostages and the other goals of the war.”