Jewish head of major San Francisco arts center resigns over anti-Israel artist protests

• Published date: 08 March 2024
• Author: ANDREW LAPIN/JTA
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"For me as an individual, the last weeks have been excruciating. Not just as a leader, but as a Jewish leader," Sara Fenske Bahat wrote in a March 3 resignation letter. She added that she felt unsafe in the museum she led, which has been closed for nearly a month following the artists' protest

Bahat posted her resignation letter on LinkedIn on Thursday, writing in a post, "While this was long in the cards, in the last few weeks, the climate around Israel-Palestine in the Bay Area became untenable."

The controversy at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, which has drawn criticism from local officials, is the latest in turmoil roiling the arts and culture world since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

Escalating controversy throughout the country

Across the country, pro-Palestinian creatives have taken to increasingly militant tactics in their efforts to protest what they characterize as inappropriate support for Israel by institutions with which they are associated.

Yerba Buena erupted as a frontier on February 15 when a group of eight artists on exhibit altered their works to add pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel messages such as "Ceasefire" and "Stop Funding Genocide." They demanded that the center join a larger movement to boycott Israel and remove all "Zionist board members and funders." The protest was organized in part by the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.

In response, the museum closed its galleries, issuing a statement condemning the language used by the artists as "neither productive nor tolerable" and saying it would not agree to "discriminate on the basis of religion, ethnic background, or national origin."

The board of directors also said that "our hearts break for the tragic loss of innocent life in Palestine and Israel," and promised to reopen the exhibit. The board said it would begin conversations with the artists by the end of the week, while emphasizing that the artists violated their agreements with the museum by altering their works.

But the planned reopening didn't happen. Days after that statement, Bahat, who has run the center on an interim basis since 2022, told the artists that their work would soon be taken down, according to Bay Area public radio station KQED. Her request to meet with the artists individually was rebuffed by the collective, which reportedly insisted on a group meeting instead. That still hasn't happened, according to the artists.

The museum has yet to reopen at all to the public, and the artists have...