{"id":20711,"date":"2026-01-30T20:15:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T20:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/u-s-galleries-close-to-protest-ice-as-budget-deadline-looms\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T20:15:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T20:15:23","slug":"u-s-galleries-close-to-protest-ice-as-budget-deadline-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/u-s-galleries-close-to-protest-ice-as-budget-deadline-looms\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Galleries Close to Protest ICE as Budget Deadline Looms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Patrick Martinez, Migration Is Natural,<\/em> 2019. Fabricated 2021. Denis Y. Suspitsyn | Courtesy the artist and Whitney Museum<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Art is inherently political, but the art world is often reticent to take a political position, wary of alienating those who sustain it\u2014particularly at the market\u2019s 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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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\u2014some after facing internal pressure from staff or artists to take a position.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, Pace Gallery<\/a>, White Cube<\/a>, David Zwirner<\/a>, Hauser & Wirth<\/a>, Lisson, Almine Rech<\/a> and Perrotin<\/a>, with historically significant and medium-sized spaces like Sean Kelly<\/a>, Spr\u00fcth Magers, Marian Goodman<\/a>, Galerie Lelong<\/a>, Greene Naftali<\/a>, Paula Cooper<\/a>, Olney Gleason, Tanya Bonakdar, Mendes Wood DM<\/a>, PPOW<\/a>, Vielmetter, Shrine<\/a>, Chris Sharp, Half Gallery<\/a>, LATITUDE<\/a>, Charles Moffett<\/a>, Swivel Gallery<\/a>, Margot Samel, Management and Hesse Flatow<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This unprecedented day of collective protest is the result of a group of New York galleries\u2014Astor Weeks, Silke Lindner and Margot Samel\u2014sending out an email inviting a handful of other dealers to take part in the initiative. But that email quickly spread, and the call to action was amplified on social media. By Thursday afternoon, more and more galleries had announced their intention to participate, leading to a widespread, coordinated physical shutdown of art galleries across the U.S.<\/p>\n

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 solidarity with the ongoing protests.<\/p>\n

In the face of deportations seemingly carried out without investigations or trials, deeply troubling reports of disappearances and the killings of U.S. civilians\u2014dynamics that alarmingly recall both the Gestapo and the desaparecidos<\/i> of more recent South American dictatorships\u2014pressure has continued to mount. The events in Minneapolis suggest there\u2019s something more fundamental than immigration enforcement going on here. According to the recent surveys, three in five Americans now agree that ICE operations are too forceful.<\/p>\n

What is General Strike U.S.?<\/h3>\n

General Strike U.S.<\/a>, a decentralized network, estimated that just 3.5 percent of the U.S. population, or 11 million people, need to participate across sectors to be effective<\/a>. The striking effort was organized not by a single union or central body but by a coalition of grassroots and labor organizations, under banners like National Shutdown and local groups that helped organize a similar action in Minnesota earlier in January. \u201cThe people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country\u2014to stop ICE\u2019s reign of terror, we need to SHUT IT DOWN,\u201d the National Shutdown website says. \u201cOn Friday, January 30, join a nationwide day of no school, no work, and no shopping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crucially, all of this comes on the last business day of January, which marks the deadline for Congress to conclude negotiations over remaining federal funding, including the Department of Homeland Security budget that covers ICE. Negotiations have stalled for this specific point, raising the prospect of another partial government shutdown if no deal is reached by that date. On January 29, the New York Times announced that a spending deal had been reached on most of the budget for the rest of the fiscal year, but allowed only two more weeks of funding for the Department of Homeland Security while lawmakers try to wrangle over restrictions to rein in what has become, at least in Democrats\u2019 eyes, an out-of-control deportation campaign.<\/p>\n

As a powerful recent opinion piece in the New York Times by Shalom Auslander<\/a>, They Were Ordinary Germans. We Are Ordinary Americans<\/a><\/i>, reminded us, omert\u00e0<\/i>\u2014the choice to remain silent\u2014is what has enabled some of history\u2019s deadliest atrocities, from the Holocaust to many other genocides that are still unfolding around us. Being misled by a distortion of truth is dangerous. Ignorance, as a form of protection or denial, is even more dangerous. And many aspects of what is happening in America today\u2014particularly since the start of the year, from language to enforcement dynamics\u2014sound alarmingly like a d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu to those familiar with world history.<\/p>\n

Galleries and museums shutting down for one day likely won\u2019t have extreme economic ramifications, but the closures are, at the very least, a way of saying, \u201cWe see. We know.\u201d It is the art world standing up, as part of the cultural sphere and a country made by a unique mix of multicultural voices, and proclaiming that it will not ignore what is unfolding in the United States, which has veered increasingly far from the principles on which it was founded.<\/p>\n

Participating galleries include:<\/strong><\/p>\n