MoMA Honors Artists From Banned Countries In NYC

Artists are making a stand against Donald Trump's immigration ban with New York's Museum of Modern Art replacing paintings by Picasso and Matisse to honor painters hailing from the seven Muslim-majority countries listed by the law. The uneasiness of the law before implemented on Jan. 27, had left the curators to hang the paintings the night before.

Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, Sudanese painter Ibrahim el-Salahi and Iranian video artist Tala Madani were among the artists showcased at MoMa reported by the Independent UK. Galleries on the fifth floor used to be a space for contemporary Western works but now hang up Iranian artists' works such as sculptors by Parviz Tanavoli and photography of Shirana Shahbazi.

MoMA's chief curator of drawings and prints Christophe Cherix told Quartz, which over the next few months they plan to showcase more paintings, sculpture, photographs, drawings, and films by artists from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Libya.

"A number of artists in our collection suddenly couldn't travel the way they used to and share their work and ideas. We wanted to reaffirm that belief that art [museums] should a place where people from all over the world can gather," Cherix said. Meanwhile, other famous paintings will be rearranged in different floors with 200 works of Picabia on MoMA's sixth floor.

Famous paintings like Van Gogh's 'Starry night' and Matisse's 'Red Studio' will remain in place. "The last thing we want is to disappoint people," he told Quartz. "The idea was to find an inclusive gesture."

In each artwork of the painters based in the affected countries, a text from the wall reads: "This work is by an artist from a nation whose citizens are being denied entry into the United States, according to a presidential executive order issued on Jan. 27, 2017.

This is one of several such artworks from the Museum's collection installed throughout the fifth-floor galleries to affirm the ideals of welcome and freedom as vital to this Museum as they are to the United States."