[1][2] The movement, led by a collective calling itself the International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings (IIAAF),[2] grew as an escalation of pressure against the institution following reports that MoMA chairman Leon Black had paid the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein charged with sex trafficking $158 million.
[4] Michael Rakowitz, one of the signing artists, noted that "MoMA has refused comment on every story that has emerged about Leon Black.
Beyond speaking, I look forward to collectively imagining an ecosystem that does not enlist our content to go on display in institutions whose board members create the very conditions in the world that many of us are devoted to dismantling.”[4] The museum's director, Glenn D. Lowry, whose contract Black had extended through 2025, has also been identified as conspicuously silent on the subject.
[1] Among the organizers was Amin Husain of Decolonize This Place, who had previously organized protests against the Whitney Museum of American Art that led to the resignation of the vice-chairman Warren Kanders whose company Safariland produces tear gas grenades used on protesters.
[1][7] On May 26, 2021, the Times of Israel reported that activists associated with the movement accused board members of the MoMA—Ron Lauder, Leon Black, and Steven Tananbaum—of "supporting apartheid rule" and "artwashing" the "occupation of Palestine".