Nine of the 28 Futurist-inspired graphics designed by Noah Fischer for G.U.L.F.’s protest at Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum. (images courtesy G.U.L.F.)

Last night’s protest action at New York’s Guggenheim Museum by the Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.) is the group’s fourth intervention and the latest to raise awareness about the labor conditions on Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates. The group attempted to unfurl a banner in the atrium of the Upper East Side museum, while other members browsing the Futurist art exhibition taped up Futurist-inspired graphics with messages targeting museum trustees and other labor-related messages, including “No Museum Built on Death” and “Chairman Mack, No Time to Waste.” A number of G.U.L.F. protesters also distributed flyers to museum visitors with a statement from G.U.L.F, which is reproduced below.

The group of over 40 individuals, which included NYU students, artists, and activists, entered the museum during the weekly pay-what-you-wish Saturday evening and beginning at roughly 6:45pm ET the group ignited their protest. A booming voice, speaking briefly from a megaphone that was quickly taken away by museum security, sparked the beginning of the museum-wide intervention.

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A museum visitor reading one of the G.U.L.F. graphics by a Futurist art work. (image by the author for Hyperallergic) 

Activists attempted to unfurl a mylar banner in the atrium, but a museum security official quickly ran and grabbed the banner before it was fully revealed. Participants later told me that the banner and megaphone was a planned distraction for security so that other activists could stick the graphics of what one person was calling “augmentations” near art works that “inspired” them. The activists said they worked to ensure that all the materials they used for the action would not harm the walls of the museum or other surfaces.

A Guggenheim security official in a beige suit stopping protesters from unfurling a banner in the atrium of the Upper East Side Museum. (screenshot from a video shot by the author for Hyperallergic)

The action comes on the heals of a New York Times front-page story on Monday, which publicized the labor problems that have plagued the NYU Abu Dhabi campus. The article went on to mention that similar issues are facing other Western-affiliated museum franchises on the same luxury island, namely Guggenheim Abu Dhabi and Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Police cars in front of the Guggenheim Museum after the G.U.L.F. intervention. (photo Hrag Vartanian/Hyperallergic)

Andrew Ross, a NYU professor of sociology, said the Times story has raised more awareness but the battle has not changed. “There has been an increased level of dialogue within NYU, the Coalition of Fair Labor at NYU … has circulated a petition on this issue and [garnered] several hundred signatures asking the administration not to be defensive, not to deflect responsibility, and to be proactive going forward, which is to say that we don’t want NYU to function as an island on Saadiyat but to be a resource that would generate policy-oriented knowledge that can be used to reform the sponsorship system,” Ross said....Continue Reading

> via Hyperallergic