Hundreds protest against Israel, war in Gaza inside New York’s Museum of Modern Art

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters held a demonstration inside New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) on Saturday afternoon, forcing the museum to close its doors several hours early, at around 4 p.m., arts and culture website Hyperallergic reports.

Close to 800 protesters filled the museum’s atrium in protest of alleged investments into Israel’s military weapons by the museum’s trustees.

The protesters distributed more than 1,000 imitation MoMA pamphlets criticizing trustees Leon Black, Larry Fink, Paula Crown, Marie-Josée Kravis and Ronald S. Lauder, the report states, and hung a banner over the lobby that read “MoMA Trustees Fund Genocide, Apartheid, and Settler Colonialism.”

In videos posted to social media, hundreds of people chant “Free Free Palestine” as they stand under various signs and banners reading “Ceasefire now,” “Long live Gaza” and “From the river to the sea,” which is a shortened version of the popular anti-Israel chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

???? New York's MoMa being occupied right now by artists and workers. pic.twitter.com/ZeqjBLGoKH

— Paolo Mossetti (@paolomossetti) February 10, 2024

After around 15 minutes, the museum’s security guards began turning people away at the doors and allowed people inside the building to exit, the report says.

A similar protest took place at the MoMA in May 2021, amid Operation Guardian of the Walls