At least 14 workers of the Noguchi Museum in New York City, including all nine front-facing staff, are participating in a work stoppage today, Wednesday, August 21, in protest of a policy that prohibits employees from wearing the Palestinian headscarves known as keffiyehs.
Last week, over 50 workers — more than two-thirds of the museum’s 72-person staff — signed an internal petition calling for the policy to be reversed, citing the anti-Palestinian sentiment of the decision amid Israel’s ongoing attacks on Gaza as well as concerns over potential damage to the museum’s reputation and credibility.
“Our Astoria community is incredibly diverse, and features a high population of
Palestinians,” reads the petition text, which Hyperallergic reviewed. “Banning the keffiyeh, a culturally significant garment, sets a strong precedent for the institution.”
In a collective statement shared with Hyperallergic, the workers also allege that the museum singled out a Black employee for their use of the keffiyeh, compounding the impact of a policy they say is discriminatory.
The worker in question, a gallery attendant at the museum for over three years, was called into a spontaneous private meeting with Director Amy Hau and an HR representative on Wednesday morning, August 14, in a newly acquired property about a block and a half from the museum. The employee, who spoke to Hyperallergic on the condition of anonymity, was surprised by both the informal nature of the meeting and Hau’s request that they stop wearing their keffiyeh. In the spring, the worker had been asked to remove a “Free Palestine” hat because it went against a museum dress code rule banning text and images; they complied.
By contrast, their keffiyeh, which bore an abstract black-and-white fishnet pattern and the red and green colors of the Palestinian flag, did not appear to violate those terms.
“I felt very caught off guard and ambushed,” the worker said. “Obviously, things are politicized, but I am showing my support for Palestinians because I don’t really see this as a political thing. I was raised Christian and I believe in peace.”
A few weeks earlier, their supervisor had notified them that a photo of them wearing the keffiyeh was circulating on social media and that the museum had received email complaints. But the supervisor was supportive and did not ask them to remove it, according to the worker.
Last Wednesday morning, however, Hau sent the worker home after they refused to take off the scarf.
Later that afternoon, the director communicated to staff onsite that “political dress” was prohibited because it made some guests feel “unsafe” and “uncomfortable” and because it could put workers at risk.
Heads of different departments expressed their concern during a monthly all-staff meeting the next morning that “ended in tears,” according to a statement from the workers participating in today’s work stoppage. When the aforementioned gallery attendant and their colleague were sent home after refusing to remove their keffiyehs, about a dozen workers in the Visitor Services, Archives, and Education departments as well as art handlers for the Noguchi’s ongoing anniversary exhibition walked out.
The museum was closed from Friday, August 16 through the weekend, a decision communicated by leadership in an email as “an opportunity to reset and recharge.”
A statement from the museum sent in response to Hyperallergic‘s request for comment said the institution has a responsibility “to foster a safe, inclusive, and welcoming environment for all staff and visitors.”
“Recently, concerns were raised about a staff member wearing a keffiyeh while at work at the Museum,” the statement read. “While we understand that the intention behind wearing this garment was to express personal views, we recognize that such expressions can unintentionally alienate segments of our diverse visitorship.”
Over the last 10 months since Hamas’s October 7 attack, Palestinian artists and activists have faced silencing and retaliation at cultural institutions worldwide as international organizations plead for an end to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which has killed over 40,000 people in the region.
Regardless of their stance on specific issues, such as the movement to boycott Israeli cultural institutions or the question of Palestinian statehood, though, most workers at the Noguchi Museum feel that the prohibition of the keffiyeh amounts to the deliberate erasure of a people’s material culture.
“The keffiyeh along with other patterned head coverings is worn by many throughout the desert countries and I consider it a part of my family’s cultural and ethnic heritage,” said one full-time employee with family members belonging to the Southwest Asian and North Africa (SWANA) diaspora, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.
The worker, whose role does not involve interfacing with visitors, also told Hyperallergic that they opposed the museum’s decision to impose the policy across departments.
“The museum has the right to set the dress code or uniform for front-facing staff. The extension of the policy to all staff as of this morning was upsetting,” they said.
Earlier this spring, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) apologized after denying entry to a visitor who was carrying a keffiyeh in his backpack. In a statement to Hyperallergic, the museum acknowledged that security staff at bag check had mistaken Brooklyn resident Ju-Hyun Park’s headscarf for a banner, an item listed as banned on MoMA’s website.
But for the staff of the Noguchi Museum — an institution dedicated to the work and legacy of a vocally anti-war artist who voluntarily entered an internment camp for Japanese Americans in 1942 — the recent ban on keffiyehs might be at odds with its mission. Isamu Noguchi created a series of sculptures about his internment experience, which the museum dedicated an exhibition to in 2018, and made other haunting works exploring the effects of the atomic bomb. He also devised concepts for memorials to the victims of the United States’s deadly attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; a piece inspired by those designs, from 1982, is currently on view at the Queens institution.
Organizing online under the group name Noguchi Museum Rights, the staffers hope museum leadership will listen to their concerns and do away with the policy, honoring what they see as Noguchi’s commitment to a diversity of perspectives and humanitarian causes.
“As staff members we are dedicated to protecting and fostering the work and legacy of Isamu Noguchi — a man who understood intimately the injustice of targeted discrimination and displacement,” their petition reads. “We believe that this directive does not serve the overall mission of the Museum. We reject the assertion that ‘politics’ can be separated from cultural institutions.”
