Protesters Demand Whitney Museum Vice Chairman Step Down

WEST VILLAGE, NY — Protesters gathered at the Whitney Museum of American Art Sunday afternoon, calling for the resignation of the museum's vice chairman who has ties to a company that manufactures tear gas used on migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Whitney Vice Chairman Warren Kanders owns Safariland, which supplied tear gas deployed against migrants at the border last month. Art news website Hyperallergic first reported the link between Kander and border agent's use of the company's tear gas.

Activists with the group Decolonize This Place staged the demonstration in solidarity with some 100 museum employees who recently signed a letter demanding Kanders step down from his post at the museum and asking for a policy on the moral qualification of trustees.

Museum Director Adam Weinberg responded to the chorus of outrage in a statement. "Even as we are idealistic and missionary in our belief in artists — as established by our founder Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney — the Whitney is first and foremost a museum. It cannot right all the ills of an unjust world, nor is that its role," Weinberg wrote.

Artists and advocates for asylum seekers gathered in the museum on Ganesvoort Street between Tenth Avenue and Washington Street in the West Village. Protesters unfurled vibrant banners with "Warren Kanders Must Go" and "Whitey Museum: No Space For Profiteer of State Violence."

Rick Chavolla, a board member of the American Indian Community House and a member of the Kumiai nation, led demonstrators in a group chant as they lit sage in the museum lobby.

"Sage is medicine. Tear gas is poison," Chavolla told the crowd, video shows.

FDNY showed up at about 2 p.m. to exterminate the open fire and ushered protesters outside of the museum to continue their protest, a FDNY spokesman said.

The Whitney Museum did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Whitney Museum of American Art in the West Village. (Photo courtesy of Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)