Patrick Martinez, Migration Is Natural, 2019. Fabricated 2021. Denis Y. Suspitsyn | Courtesy the artist and Whitney Museum

Art is inherently political, but the art world is often reticent to take a political position, wary of alienating those who sustain it—particularly at the market’s highest price tiers. Very few international galleries responded overtly to the war in Ukraine, the destruction and bloodshed in Gaza or the more than 30,000 deaths that have been widely reported as resulting from the recent protests in Iran. Domestically, the sector did not mobilize when the Trump administration rolled back funding for arts and culture and democratic structures across the federal government were progressively weakened. Nor did it respond collectively in recent weeks as international law was openly tested in Venezuela, military rhetoric escalated in unprecedented ways with pretenses on Greenland and diplomatic norms all but fell by the wayside.

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The most the art world tended to do was engage online; many galleries and institutions, for example, participated in #BlackOutTuesday by posting black squares and issuing statements of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. After October 2023 and throughout the Gaza war, galleries and institutions also shared posts on social media expressing solidarity with Palestinians or calling for a ceasefire—some after facing internal pressure from staff or artists to take a position.

Today (Jan. 30), however, something shifted, and galleries across the U.S. have suspended operations to jointly participate in a nationwide general strike opposing the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) funding and operations. Included among them are industry heavyweights such as Gagosian, Pace Gallery, White Cube, David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, Lisson, Almine Rech and Perrotin, with historically significant and medium-sized spaces like Sean Kelly, Sprüth Magers, Marian Goodman, Galerie Lelong, Greene Naftali, Paula Cooper, Olney Gleason, Tanya Bonakdar, Mendes Wood DM, PPOW, Vielmetter, Shrine, Chris Sharp, Half Gallery, LATITUDE, Charles Moffett, Swivel Gallery, Margot Samel, Management and Hesse Flatow. Some institutions are also participating in the general strike, including the Drawing Center and El Museo del Barrio in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. They join other institutions in Minneapolis-St. Paul, including the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA) and the Walker Art Center, that closed after the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti in........

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