By Ellen Cans
Leon D. Black has been the chairman of the Museum of Modern Art since 2018. Now, some 150 artist and art workers are banding together calling for MoMA to cut its ties with Black.
The billionaire investor, art collector and philanthropist was formerly CEO and co-founder of global equity firm Apollo Global Management. Black, 70, recently stepped down from his company after an investigation found he paid $158 million to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein for unclear reasons. Now, with several different statements, over 150 artists and art workers are calling for MoMA to sever its ties with Black as well.
In a 2020 letter to Apollo investors, Black said that Epstein provided him with “estate planning, tax and philanthropic advice” to his “family partnership and other related family entities” between 2012 and 2017. An independent review by Dechert LLP, released on January 25, 2021, revealed that Epstein was able to save Black at least $1.3 billion in taxes. Black has never been personally accused of any inappropriate conduct or wrongdoing, and previously told Bloomberg News that he “deeply regrets” having any dealings with Epstein. In all, Black has donated over $40 million to the Museum of Modern Art.
“Beyond [Black’s] removal, we must think seriously about a collective exit from art’s imbrication in toxic philanthropy and structures of oppression, so that we don’t have to have the same conversations over and over, one board member at a time,” reads a statement signed by artists including Nan Goldin, Noah Fischer, Paddy Johnson, an anonymous feminist art collective named Guerrilla Girls and the organization Artists For Workers, saying museums must find a way to pull themselves away from big private donors.
“Museums and other arts institutions must pursue alternative models, cooperative structures, Land Back initiatives, reparations, and additional ideas that constitute an abolitionist approach toward the arts and arts patronage, so that they align with the egalitarian principles that drew us to art in the first place.”
As per Hyperallergic, there were multiple statements, many of them heated, calling for MOMA to oust Black. “We note that Leon Black’s corruption extends far as his ‘investment’ firm is also the owner of Constellis, formerly known as Blackwater, a private military firm which was banned from operating in Iraq after its staff were charged with war crimes,” reads a partial statement from the MoMA Divest Coalition. “Nothing short of a major reconstitution of the board, a change of directors, a public reckoning, and a reimagining of the institutional and curatorial mission of the museum is acceptable.”
