Jhumpa Lahiri refused an award for artistic integrity from a museum that fired staff over kaffiyehs.
In a show of pro-Palestinian solidarity, the author and activist Jhumpa Lahiri refused to accept an honor from the Noguchi Museum yesterday.
The Isamu Noguchi Award, named for the museum’s founder, has been conferred annually since 2014. It seeks to honor creatives with a high level of artistic integrity. Previous recipients include the artist Theaster Gates and the novelist Hanya Yanagihara.
Like many other cultural institutions (see: the 92nd Street Y), the Noguchi Museum has come under fire recently for its leaders’ equivocation on Palestine. The Queens institution recently fired three workers for wearing kaffiyehs, on the heels of implementing a dress code that bans political speech. The leaders have maintained political neutrality despite mounting pressure from within and without to at least issue a statement about the ongoing genocide.
Trasonia Abbott, a gallery employee who was terminated for noncompliance with the policy, told Hyperallergic that the museum’s neutrality is particularly galling in the context of Noguchi’s activism.
The Japanese-American sculptor was no stranger to politics. He cofounded the Nisei Writers and Artists Mobilization for Democracy, a collective that lobbied for the civil rights of persecuted Japanese Americans during World War II. And in 1944, he famously interned himself at the Poston Relocation Camp in Arizona as an act of solidarity and protest against Executive Order 1066.
Lahiri, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake, has also been public about her anti-war values. She’s signed letters supporting campus protestors.
This more public demonstration comes at a moment when more and more celebrity authors are using their pulpits for Palestine. Addressing a packed reading crowd at Southbank Centre in London this Wednesday, Sally Rooney prefaced her remarks with a strong condemnation of the ongoing genocide. And Ta-Nehisi Coates’ much-hyped new book The Message contains an unflinching chronicle of the authors’ travels through the occupied territories. To all of this, we say “kudos.”
In the meantime, Ms. Lahiri? We’d like to give you the Lit Hub Award for “artistic integrity.” Though we are sorry to report it doesn’t come with cash.
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