U.S. Galleries Close Doors in Anti-ICE Protest

Hundreds of art spaces across the United States have closed today as part of a nationwide shutdown demanding an end to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.

In New York, commercial galleries including Pace, Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner are taking part in the action, as is The Armory Center for the Arts in California and Kaleidoscope Art Collective in Arkansas.

In an Instagram post, the New York-based non-profit space Cue Art said: ‘We stand in solidarity with the fight against ICE in our communities. We believe in the power of collective action and also acknowledge that any one-day strike, public statement, or short term action is an imperfect and incomplete tool.’

The shutdown follows the fatal shooting of intensive care nurse Alex Pretti and mother and poet Renée Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis earlier this month. In December, Keith Porter Jr was also shot and killed by an off-duty ICE agent in Los Angeles.

Organisers of the action are demanding ‘no work, no school, no shopping’, as part of an effort to ‘shut down’ the economy. They are also directly appealing to the country’s government to ‘stop funding ICE’.

A statement from Los Angeles’ Regen Projects said the gallery would be closed to ‘honour the national day of action in support of the people of Minneapolis and the families of Renée Nicole Macklin Good, Alex Pretti, Keith Porter Jr, and all victims of violence perpetrated by ICE in Los Angeles and nationwide’.

The Minnesota Museum of American Art has also closed its doors for the second time in a week. The space previously closed on 23 January, following the killing of Alex Pretti, for ‘staff community service and well-being’. ‘We support the communities we serve and come from,’ a statement said.

The shutdown has also received support abroad, with Brigitte Mulholland taking to Instagram to announce the closure of her eponymous Paris gallery. She wrote: ‘I’m an American immigrant living in France. I grew up in New York, proud to live in the great Melting Pot. My ancestors fled there to escape famine, persecution, war…

‘The gallery will be closed tomorrow in solidarity, and I will not be spending any money with U.S. companies as well.’

Other commercial galleries taking part in the action include Pace, Lévy Gorvy Dayan, Lehmann Maupin, White Cube, Alexander Gray Associates, Michael Werner, Peter Blum Gallery, PPOW, and Marian Goodman Gallery. —[O]

Main image: Photo: Yasmin Peyman/Unsplash.