Seattle Museum Closes After Staff Walkout Protesting Exhibition’s “Zionist Language”

Seattle’sWing Luke Museumremained closed the morning of May 29 following a walkout by staff in protest of an exhibition including language that the striking workers say equates calls for Palestinian liberation and anti-Zionism with antisemitism. Multiple outlets have reported that twenty-four of the museum’s fifty-two employees staged the action on May 22, the day the contested exhibition, “Confronting Hate Together,” was to have opened. Organized by the Wing Luke Museum, which centers the culture and history of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, in collaboration with the Black Heritage Society of Washington State and the Washington State Jewish Historical Society, the show was meant to explore the ways in which communities fight back against forms of bigotry against Black, Asian, and Jewish populations, among others.

The protesting employees pointed to a wall text that read in part, “Today antisemitism is often disguised as anti-Zionism, with Jews everywhere expected to defend the actions of Israel’s right-wing government.” The text cited the spray-painting this past November of the words “Stop the Killing” (actually “Stop Killing”) on a Mercer Island synagogue as an example of antisemitic behavior and read, “On university campuses, pro-Palestinian groups have voiced support for Hamas (which is classified as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government) and a Palestinian state stretching ‘from the river to the sea,’ a phrase defined by the erasure of Israel.”

In a May 19 letter to the museum, the employees expressed concern that the above language “attempts to justify colonialist and white supremacist ideas under the guise of ‘local storytelling’” and that it aligned the museum with Zionism. In a May 24 Instagram post, the workers acknowledged that they were withholding labor in protest of the exhibition’s “Zionist language,” further asserting, “We love the Wing Luke Museum and are consistently honored to steward the stories of our community members, many of whom have experienced the destructive harm of white supremacy, genocide, and violence that parallels the experience of Palestinians today. Our solidarity with Palestine should be reflected in our AA/NHPI institutions. It sets a dangerous precedent of platforming colonial, white supremacist perspectives and goes against the museum’s mission as a community-based museum advancing racial and social equity.”

The Wing Luke Museum at the time of this writing had not yet responded to a request for comment. However, in a May 25 Instagram post, the institution described the walkout as “respectful” and wrote, “As an organization rooted in dialogue, we acknowledge and support the right of our staff to express their beliefs and personal truths and to this end, we are holding space for a careful and thoughtful process of listening with intent to hear multiple perspectives in pursuit of a mutual way forward.”