Saturday, July 27, 2019

Neo-fascists push out Whitney Museum board member


Brian Allen

Warren Kanders, a Manhattan philanthropist, quit the Whitney Museum’s board on Thursday. He leaves after months of protests over his business’s sale of tear gas to the federal government, which used it to control crowds trying to enter the country illegally via Mexico. His exit is a big story. It should make institutional trustees and New York philanthropists uneasy. It’s also the most bizarre museum story in years.


Unlike the protestors, I don’t see a connection between the enforcement of the Mexican border and the governance of a New York art museum. Yet open letters—signed by marginal academics and cranks—demanded Kanders’s expulsion, and now they’ve gotten it.  

Kanders’s resignation will end nothing, for the protestors will prove insatiable. They won’t be satisfied by a single scalp and will seek out more targets at every museum with a trustee whose career, beliefs, family, or philanthropy conflict with left-wing ideology.


Mr. Allen says the Kanders family has given the Whitney Museum around $10 million. Will the protesting artists and museum staff pony up that amount?

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