The exterior of Anne Pasternak's apartment building in Brooklyn Heights, where activists hung a banner and splashed red paint on the evening of 11 June Photo by New York city council member Lincoln Restler, via X
The New York Police Department is investigating incidents of vandalism targeting the homes of Brooklyn Museum director Anne Pasternak and several members of the museum's board of directors.
According to information posted by New York officials, a building in Brooklyn Heights and “other locations affiliated with” Brooklyn Museum leaders were targeted overnight between 11 June and 12 June. Outside the building in Brooklyn Heights, a banner was hung with the message “Brooklyn Museum Anne Pasternak White-Supremacist Zionist” and “Funds Genocide”, as well as blood-red handprints. Nearby doors and windows were also splashed with fake blood.
"This is an abhorrent act of antisemitism and it has no place in New York or anywhere else," New York state's governor, Kathy Hochul, wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). "We stand with the Jewish community in the face of hate and will continue to fight antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head." New York City's mayor, Eric Adams, similarly denounced the vandalism in his own post on the platform, writing: "This is not peaceful protest or free speech. This is a crime, and it's overt, unacceptable antisemitism."
In all, three homes in Manhattan and two in Brooklyn were vandalised on Tuesday night, NYPD officials told CNN. The other residences targeted include the homes of two Brooklyn Museum trustees and Kimberly Panicek Trueblood, the institution's president and chief operating officer, The New York Times reported. According to NBC New York, sources at the NYPD said they are looking for around 15 people, and that the group was last seen driving a white U-Haul rental truck on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
"We are deeply troubled by these horrible acts targeting leaders connected to the museum," a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Museum told The Art Newspaper in a statement. "For two centuries, the Brooklyn Museum has worked to foster mutual understanding through art and culture, and we have always supported peaceful protest and open, respectful dialogue. Violence, vandalism, and intimidation have no place in that discourse."
In a statement on Wednesday, the members of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD)—of which Pasternak is a member—denounced the vandalism.
“We, the members of AAMD, unequivocally and forcefully condemn this antisemitic act,” the statement reads. “As cultural leaders—and also as people of different backgrounds and experiences—we understand the emotion and anger the Israel-Hamas war has wrought. This, however, does not mean that protestors have unencumbered rights to attack individual persons in pursuit of their cause. Whether at someone's home or at a museum, this behaviour is inexcusable. It does tremendous disservice to discourse and conflict resolution, and the ends simply do not justify the means. We hope that the authorities will pursue and prosecute the perpetrators to the fullest extent of the law.”
According to New York city council member Lincoln Restler—who visited the building in Brooklyn Heights, which is in his district—the incident was captured on video and the NYPD is investigating. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), New York City comptroller Brad Lander described the vandals’ actions as “way over the line into antisemitism, harming the cause they claim to care about, and making everyone less safe”.
The targeted attacks on Pasternak’s apartment building and the homes of Jewish board members come less than two weeks after a major pro-Palestine demonstration at the Brooklyn Museum, which was met with a violent response from the NYPD and resulted in more than 30 arrests. Like many US institutions, since the onset of the Israel-Hamas the Brooklyn Museum has faced calls to cut ties with corporate partners and individual donors whose finances activists say are tied to Israel's government, its military or the Israeli defense industry.
Around 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s terror attacks in Israel on 7 October, and around 250 people were taken hostage. Around 80 hostages and the remains of more than 40 captives who have been killed are believed to still be in Gaza, according to the Associated Press. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military’s ongoing aerial and ground campaign in Gaza, according to health authorities there.
