The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles said it would keep its Geffen Contemporary space closed to the public through the weekend as the National Guard continues to face off with anti-ICE protestors nearby.
This past Sunday, MOCA closed the Geffen Contemporary space, currently host to an Olafur Eliasson show; the venue has been shuttered since then. On Wednesday, the museum said the closure would remain in place.
“In light of the evolving conditions in downtown Los Angeles and the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA’s proximity to ongoing demonstrations and increased military activity near the Los Angeles Federal Detention Facility, we are making some adjustments to our operating hours to prioritize the safety and well-being of our staff and visitors,” the museum wrote on Instagram.
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The museum’s Grand Avenue building will remain open, but its regularly scheduled late-night hours for Thursday have been canceled. The area surrounding the museum is under a curfew that begins at 8 p.m., but the museum did not provide an exact reasoning for the cancelation of the late-night hours in its statement.
Over the weekend, MOCA gained publicity because Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of the Russian collective Pussy Riot, continued to stage a performance called POLICE STATE while arrests took place outside the museum. For the performance, Tolokonnikova turned a part of the Geffen Contemporary into a space resembling a prison cell, lining its walls with art by Russians, Belarusians, and Americans who were previously incarcerated. She later joined the protests taking place beyond museum walls.
Tolokonnikova’s durational performance was expected to continue through Saturday, but its remainder will be postponed, the museum said. The artist commented on MOCA’s Instagram post, writing, “see you on the streets this Saturday,” followed by a chain emoji, a police car emoji, and a fire emoji. “migrants make America great,” she also wrote.
The protests began this past Friday after ICE searched locations in LA for people that they claimed had entered the US without documentation. The next day, Trump ordered the deployment of the National Guard to quell the protests and protect immigration agents, something that Governor Gavin Newsom called “unlawful” in a lawsuit against the President. Numerous arrests have followed the onset of the protests, with more than 200 people detained last night alone for violating curfew, according to Mayor Karen Bass.
Some protestors have vandalized certain sites, including MOCA’s facade. A museum spokesperson did not respond to request for comment on the vandalism earlier this week.
While MOCA is not itself being protested, it has figured prominently in the demonstrations. Barbara Kruger‘s 1990 mural Questions, a work commissioned by the museum and exhibited permanently near Geffen Contemporary, has appeared in so many photographs of the protests that the Los Angeles Times ran an entire article on the piece’s significance this week.
Questions features text reading: “Who is beyond the law? Who is bought and sold? Who is free to choose? Who does the time? Who follows orders? Who salutes longest? Who prays loudest? Who dies first? Who laughs last?”
In that Los Angeles Times piece, Kruger said of the protests, “This provocation is giving Trump what he wants: the moment he can declare martial law. As if that’s not already in play.”
