Whitney Museum Suspends Independent Study Program

Weeks after cancelling a performance on Palestinian mourning organized by the Independent Study Program’s (ISP) current Curatorial cohort, the Whitney Museum of American Art has suspended the program for the 2025–26 year, per a museum statement to Hyperallergic today, June 2. The ISP’s associate director position, most recently held by Sara Nadal-Melsió, “will not be maintained,” the museum said.

Over 300 ISP alumni and community members representing decades of the program have signed an open letter to the museum outlining their “unequivocal support” for the current cohort, including Judith Butler, Candice Breitz, Huey Copeland, Walid Raad, Emily Jacir, Alfredo Jaar, Andrea Fraser, Dread Scott, Mark Dion, Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, Julia Bryan-Wilson, and Deborah Kass, among others.

“The Whitney Museum’s stated mission and core values are grounded precisely in its acceptance of dissent, reinvention, and activism,” the letter reads. “If the Whitney Museum denies the ISP the ability to independently persist as a site of critique over an ongoing genocide, then the Whitney Museum loses all claim to uphold the very values it cites as its guiding principles.”

The canceled performance, “No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance” by artists Noel Maghathe, Fadl Fakhouri, and Fargo Tbakhi, was scheduled to take place on May 14 as a part of the ISP curatorial exhibition a grammar of attention. But the Whitney Museum, which supports the ISP program, abruptly canceled the performance after Director Scott Rothkopf took issue with an introduction Tbakhi gave for an earlier staging of the work. In his introduction for this initial staging, presented in collaboration with the Poetry Project and Jewish Currents last year, Tbakhi instructs audience members who support Israel to leave the room. According to Nadal-Melsió, Rothkopf said that Tbakhi’s prelude went against the museum’s “community guidelines.”

The three cohorts that make up the ISP program — Curatorial, Studio, and Critical Studies — denounced the museum’s decision by issuing public statements, pulling or modifying their work in the two ISP exhibitions, and distributing leaflets referencing the performance throughout the displays. The Critical Studies fellows also decided to shut down their capstone symposium altogether to “ensure that our opposition to the cancellation for the performance was known,” as cohort member Adrienne Oliver stated to Hyperallergic at the time.

Nadal-Melsió also issued a public statement on May 19 saying that the “independence of the ISP has been seriously compromised” and that she “disagree[s] with and regret[s] the museum’s decision.”

On Friday, May 23, some 50 protesters including several ISP alumni staged an intervention in the museum lobby during the Free Friday Nights programming. Sparked by the performance cancellation, the protest addressed the Museum’s board members and their ties to entities profiting from Israel’s deadly attacks in Gaza, such as Nancy Carrington Crown, whose family owns a majority of shares in the arms and information systems company General Dynamics, and Estée Lauder heir Leonard Lauder, whose brother Ronald is the president of the World Jewish Congress and a chairman emeritus of the Jewish National Fund.

In a statement to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for the Whitney confirmed that the next iteration of the annual ISP program would not take place.

“Given the effort participants make to travel from across the world to join the ISP, we believe it would be a disservice to welcome a new cohort in September with the present gap in leadership,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We think the most responsible approach is to take the coming months to hear from our community, reflect on the ISP’s tremendous recent growth and change, and find a new long-term Director to lead the program forward.”

Founded by Ron Clark in 1968, the ISP has a near-six-decade history of propelling artist, critic, and curator careers internationally, including the likes of Jenny Holzer, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Roberta Smith. Clark, who directed the program for 54 years, retired in 2023, leaving the program in the hands of Gregg Bordowitz, director-at-large, and Associate Director Nadal-Melsió.

“The canceled performance, scrutinized artwork and scholarship, and atmosphere of censorship have their roots in a broader political climate of fear and intimidation in the United States, and follow other recent crackdowns on free expression, protest, and speech by artists and scholars supporting Palestine,” today’s open letter from ISP alumni reads.

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