In protest at the ban on staff wearing keffiyehs, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri refused to accept the Isamu Noguchi Prize awarded every year by the museum founded almost 40 years ago in Astoria by the American-Japanese artistfamous for its sculptures and designer furniture. “Lahiri withdrew her acceptance of the award in reaction to our new dress code,” the museum said: “We respect her perspective in the knowledge that our decisions may not be in line with everyone’s opinion.”
A month ago the Noguchi Museum announced a ban on staff from wearing, during working hours, clothes or accessories that express “political messages, slogans or symbols”. As a result of the ban, three employees who refused to remove the keffiyeh worn as a sign of solidarity with the Palestinian people were fired. The new code, which does not apply to visitors, was adopted after several staff members wore the traditional Palestinian scarf for months after Israel’s military actions in Gaza for reasons that one of the fired employees described as “cultural” . In a letter to the museum management after the announcement was published, around fifty of the approximately 70 employees recalled that Noguchi himself hated wars and that during the Second World War he was voluntarily interned in one of the detention camps for Japanese-Americans created in Arizona after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
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