Gallery 1 — WRITERS AGAINST THE WAR ON GAZA

BOYCOTT PENSKE PUBLICATIONS: ARTFORUM, ART IN AMERICA, AND ARTNEWS

Since October 27, 2023, over 700 writers, artists, and culture workers signed a letter attesting to their editorial independence from Penske Media Corporation (PMC), refusing all forms of participation, including any written, editorial, or commercial activities, with three of the media magnate’s subsidiary publications: Artforum, Art in America, and ARTnews.

WHY BOYCOTT PENSKE?

On October 19, 2023, under the editorial oversight of David Velasco, Artforum published “An Open Letter from the Art Community to Cultural Organizations,” which called for “an end to the killing and harming of all civilians, an immediate ceasefire, [and] the passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza.” Days later, Penske Media Corporation—which acquired Artforum at the beginning of the year—fired the magazine’s editor-in-chief, David Velasco, for signing and publishing the letter, which refused to condemn Palestinian armed resistance to the ongoing occupation of their land and apartheid of their people by the settler-colonial regime of “Israel.”

Within days, nearly half of Artforum’s editorial staff resigned in solidarity with Velasco, contributing editors of the magazine pulled their names from the masthead, and over two-thirds of the contributors to the 2023 year-end issue pulled their pieces. Since then, over 700 writers and artists have joined the boycott of the Penske Media Corporation’s art-related publications—namely, Artforum, Art in America and ARTnews—an action which has since been endorsed by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

TERMS OF THE BOYCOTT:

Signatories of this letter agree to refuse:

paid or unpaid subscriptions of the three aforementioned publications;
contribution of writing or granting of publication rights;
contribution of images or granting of image rights;
purchase of advertising;
consulting engagements;
social media engagement;
granting on- or off-record interviews to employees or contractors of any of the above entities.

SINCE THE BOYCOTT BEGAN—RESPONDING TO ARTFORUM’S “PALESTINE” ISSUE:

Since Velasco’s firing in October 2023, no changes have yet been made to the managerial team responsible for his discharge—one of the highest profile instances of repression of pro-Palestinian speech. They did, however, work tirelessly to replace Velasco with Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan as the magazine’s new editor-in-chief. Following an editorial statement that purported to affirm the magazine as a “place of free speech” while at the same time eliding any reference to the ousting of its prior editor, Ryan published an issue in the summer of 2024 which sought to highlight protests in museums and included portfolios of two Palestinian artists. A meager attempt to salvage Penske’s acquisitions —and to save her own reputation—Tina Rivers Ryan’s Palestine-themed issue is perhaps the most cynical and malicious form of representation imaginable, purporting to support Palestinians by acting at the behest of the magazine’s Zionist owners.

Velasco’s publication of the letter last October posed a controversy for an overly cautious magazine, and his firing was its attempt to avoid a public relations crisis. The subsequent nine months of brutal Israeli bombing, and the resulting disease, starvation, and ever-worsening crisis of refugee displacement has rendered the continued silence of any purportedly progressive magazine indefensible.

This ongoing boycott by writers, artists, and art workers targets Penske Media Corporation’s inability or unwillingness to report the truth about Palestinian life under occupation or to defend Palestinian interests.

Read our letter to Dr. Tina Rivers Ryan, as well as a TOP TEN list of reasons not to write for this irredeemable rag here.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Signatories of this boycott believe that Artforum, Art in America, and ARTnews deserve better. Prior to their purchase by Penske in January 2023, these magazines maintained a legacy of editorial independence from their owners. We believe that these publications should not be owned by Penske Media Corporation but by the culture workers who have made their pages valuable since 1962.

This boycott will end when editorial independence of Artforum is restored and material changes are made to the organization of each of the three above-mentioned publications, namely by way of the disposition of the publications by Penske to their respective staff.

Boycotting is a key tactic in the struggle for liberation, one that Palestinians have long called for as part of the BDS campaign. Cultural boycotts push toward new kinds of cultural consensus that value human life above profit, that are fearless in calling out genocide, and that stand up to real political threat, laying bare liberal cover-ups that seek sinister financial gain.

Read the full attestation letter, and join the boycott here.