On January 27, Pace Gallery’s New York flagship building closed to the public for the day after being spray-painted with pro-Palestine messages. Pace Gallery is the latest in a series of New York galleries to be tagged with phrases related to the conflict in Gaza. Previously, Lévy Gorvy Dayan gallery had been adorned with posters protesting its owners’ views on the conflict, and several Chinatown galleries had messages affixed, calling on dealers to address Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza.
The gallery’s social media announcement about its temporary closure did not explicitly mention the pro-Palestine messages sprayed on the premises. The closure took place on a Saturday, typically the busiest day for galleries in Chelsea.
A spokesperson from Pace Gallery informed ARTnews that the reason for the closure was the cleanup required due to spray-painted words and pasted images on the exterior of their 540 West 25th Street gallery.
The spokesperson stated, “Between Friday night and Saturday morning, the exterior of our 540 West 25th Street gallery was vandalized. The vandalism was extensive enough to necessitate the gallery’s closure while we complete clean-up efforts. The safety of our staff and visitors to our galleries is of the utmost importance, as is our commitment to fostering a safe and open workplace that respects differences of thought within our community.”
The statement continued, emphasizing the gallery’s diverse community of artists and employees actively engaged in socio-political issues, and their commitment to supporting meaningful civil discourse even in cases of disagreement.
Around a week ago, Pace posted about Signals, a 2023 video by Michal Rovner, an Israeli artist who is represented by the gallery. The video, according to Pace’s description, is “a call for the safe return of the more than 100 Israeli hostages still missing.” It features rows of figures that wave their arms around; the chest of each person appears to emit a red glow.
“These hand gestures are a universal code for help, a signal of distress,” Rovner has said of the work. “The red pulses are related to heartbeats, but it’s also a color of urgency and danger.”
Signals has appeared in Times Square, as well as in public sites in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. When Pace posted about the New York version, commenters seized on the wording of the gallery’s description for the piece, which initially provided a death count for the Hamas attack while also eliding figures for the amount of Gazans who have been killed in its wake.
Among the top-liked comments on the post is one that accuses Pace of “art-washing a genocide.” After receiving other such comments on the post, Pace appears to have edited the caption for it to include mention that the current conflict has “claimed the lives of more than 23,000 Palestinians to date.” The post now bears an appended line about the update; it says the gallery previously “omitted the broader context of the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the horrific loss of life.”
