When Warren B. Kanders resigned from the Whitney Museum of American Art’s board of trustees last year, the disgraced multimillionaire penned a sour letter lamenting a demise in decency. His involvement with the weapons manufacturer Safariland, he claimed, had little to do with the museum’s mission or his position as vice chairman: “The politicized and oftentimes toxic environment in which we find ourselves across all spheres of public discourse, including the art community, puts the work of this board in great jeopardy.”

Artists and workers felt otherwise. Whitney staff members signed an open letter calling for Kanders’s resignation after Hyperallergic first reported on Kanders’s connections to Safariland. Withdrawals from the Whitney Biennial exhibition accompanied weekly protests in the museum’s lobby organized by the artist-activist group Decolonize This Place (DTP). Many in the media wondered how someone who profits from tear gas used by the US Border Patrol could rank so highly at such a prestigious cultural institution.

One year later, New York’s art museums are regularly in the news for similar controversies. Waves of protests at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) have called out trustees for their investments in private prisons, ICE detention centers, and private military contractor Constellis (formerly Blackwater). Workers at the Brooklyn Museum recently signed an open letter detailing mistreatment from executive leadership. And at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, workers greeted guests with pro-union video messages during its reopening, and a group of anonymous employees called for the removal of three top executives. Activist groups Artists for Workers and The Illuminator projected messages of solidarity with the exploited workers of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi on the Manhattan museum’s facade.