Guggenheim Museum’s Façade Occupied by Protesters’ Projection

The Illuminator's projection on the Guggenheim Museum. Courtesy the Illuminator.

In a follow-up to last month’s protests in the museum lobby (see report from artnet News), the Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF) teamed up with the Occupy Wall Street Illuminator to “occupy” the facade of New York’s Guggenheim Museum on Tuesday night. The 40-minute action projected messages such as “Art Is Not a Luxury” and “1% Museum”  onto the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright building.

GULF is dedicated to championing the rights of workers building the new Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi. The group cites recent fact-finding missions to the construction site by the Human Rights Watch and the Gulf Labor Coalition that discovered “multiple labor violations, generated by a system built on human suffering and debt bondage.”

According to Hyperallergic, OWS will soon cede the Illuminator to the Movement Resource Group, and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to build a new one.


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