Art collector Scott Lorinsky has resigned from his posts on the board of directors for two arts organizations after he allegedly encouraged violence against demonstrators protesting in support of Palestinians in New York.
On February 2, an anonymous activist account, Decentralize Culture, shared a video on Instagram of a man believed to be Lorinsky at a pro-Palestine demonstration in Manhattan on January 27. Lorinsky allegedly “told multiple vehicles to ram through the crowd of protestors,” according to the social media post.
Lorinsky, previously interviewed about his collecting strategy by Artnet News’s Katya Kazakina, had seats on the board of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and at Visual AIDS, a nonprofit dedicated to recording the impact of the AIDS epidemic on the artistic community in New York.
“Visual AIDS is not able to comment at this time other than to confirm that Scott Lorinsky has stepped down from the Visual AIDS board of directors,” interim director Kyle Croft said in an email. Lorinsky’s name has been removed from the website for Visual AIDS, an archive of the page shows.
“In light of the recent allegations, Scott Lorinsky has stepped down from the board of CCS Bard. CCS Bard thanks Scott for his support over the years,” the college leadership wrote in an emailed statement to Artnet News.
According to Hyperallergic, which first reported the news, Lorinsky is the managing director of Napier Global Capital. Artnet News has also reached out to the firm for additional comments.
Lorinsky’s controversial remarks also earned the ire of Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Dawn, a nonprofit agency that promotes democracy and human rights in the Middle East, founded by the late journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated in 2018.
“All well and good that clearly deranged Scott Lorinsky has left the boards of CCS Bard and Visual AIDS for inciting violence against pro Palestine protesters,” Whitson posted on social media. “But is FBI and NYPD investigating this as a hate crime and is Napier Park still employing him?”
Decentralize Culture also celebrated the resignation of Lorinsky on Instagram, stating: “We will continue to publicly shame every Zionist in the art world and beyond until their influence is extinguished.”