Protesters covered the steps of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art with a large patchwork blanket on Sunday displaying messages of solidarity with Palestine to draw attention to Israel's war on Gaza.
The action began with several concurrent events, including protestors unfurling a 30-by-50-foot quilt on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s steps, a dabke-inspired performance disrupting the museum’s lobby, and the distribution of fliers in adjacent galleries that detail the institution’s Zionist ties.
The quilt, a collection of painted squares contributed by 64 artists around the world, was shipped to New York City and debuted in a reclamation of the city’s largest art museum.
Each 40-by-40-inch square was rendered in the colors of the Palestinian flag and represents artists’ responses to the prompt “From oppression to liberation, free Palestine.” Squares include imagery referencing the late Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, tatreez (traditional Palestinian embroidery), poppies and the Jenin Horse (a landmark Palestinian sculpture recently destroyed by the IOF), among other emblems of resistance and freedom. Artists who collaborated on this project modeled the quilt after the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, recognizing commonalities in their grassroots creation processes, handmade nature and intention of sharing messages of protection, warmth, grief and resistance.