ANTI-GENTRIFICATION ACTIVISTS PROTEST LAURA OWENS EXHIBITION AT THE WHITNEY MUSEUM

Benjamin Sutton

An alliance of activists from Los Angeles and New York highlighted the role of the artist and her dealer, Gavin Brown, in artwashing the gentrification of working-class neighborhoods.

“Laura Owens, Gavin Brown, our hoods unite to take you down! Leave our hoods and do what’s right: Give your keys to Boyle Heights!” So went the chant intoned by activists in the galleries of the Whitney Museum and at its main entrance during Wednesday night’s VIP opening for the institution’s Laura Owens survey show.

The activists, from a coalition of anti-gentrification groups in New York City and Los Angeles, were there to remind attendees at the soirée that Owens and her dealer, Gavin Brown, were at the forefront of the influx of galleries into LA’s Boyle Heights neighborhood with their space 356 Mission. Brown’s New York locations, in Chinatown and Harlem, have set off similar allegations of artwashing the gentrification of diverse and predominantly working-class neighborhoods.

On Wednesday night, many of the protesters — including members of Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement, Defend Boyle Heights, Chinatown Art Brigade, the Brooklyn Anti-gentrification Network, Equality for Flatbush, Take Back the Bronx, Decolonize This Place, Defend Corona, Mothers on the Move, People’s Cultural Plan, and ICE FREE QUEENS — were stationed at the Whitney’s main entrance on Gansevoort Street, addressing party attendees as they arrived and departed. A smaller group of activists demonstrated inside the exhibition, unfurling a large banner that read “Laura Owens and Gavin Brown Fuera de Boyle Heights” (“Laura Owens and Gavin Brown Out of Boyle Heights”) and distributing information about the LA neighborhood’s fight against gentrification.

A focal point of the action was to draw out the parallels between the rapid gentrification of neighborhoods in New York and Los Angeles, and how artists and galleries in both cities often contribute to that process. Hyperallergic asked members of one of the groups that organized the protest, the Boyle Heights Alliance Against Artwashing and Displacement (BHAAAD), to discuss the connections between the art world’s role in gentrification on both coasts and the response to Wednesday’s Whitney action…………………

https://hyperallergic.com/411134/anti-gentrification-activists-protest-laura-owens-exhibition-at-the-whitney-museum/