This November 22, the Neue Nationalgalerie, one of Berlin's major museums, is due to inaugurate a retrospective of the work of Nan Goldin, 71, a great name in contemporary photography. Entitled “This Will Not End Well”, this exhibition is offered in turn in several European cities. In the German capital, however, the opening will be held in a strange context, which the magazine The mirror summarized in these terms: “Almost no one talks about Nan Goldin's work. Instead, everyone is arguing about Israel and Palestine.”
Born into an American Jewish family, Nan Goldin became known in the 1980s by unvarnishedly chronicling her private life and that of her friends in New York during the AIDS years. It is regularly exhibited in the greatest museums in the world. But in recent years, she has been talked about as much for her art as for her commitments. She notably put her notoriety at the service of a crusade against the Sackler family, whose pharmaceutical empire fueled the opioid crisis in the United States.
An opening or a platform?
Since October 7, 2023, the American has been campaigning against the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip. From October 19 of the same year, she was among the signatories of a “open letter from the artistic community to cultural institutions”, an anonymous text published in the American magazine Artforum and denouncing “escalation towards genocide” in the Gaza Strip. The fact that the massacres committed by Hamas are not explicitly mentioned in this text has sparked heated controversy.
Throughout 2024, Nan Goldin remained faithful to her pro-Palestinian commitment. On October 14, the artist was still among the “200 Jewish activists” who were arrested in New York, during a demonstration by the Jewish Voice for Peace collective, organized to denounce American support for Israel, reports the site Hyperallergic.
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