Targeting the NGV

Four thoughts as a preface to further action

I’m currently drafting some follow-up posts about the intractable complicity of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) and the ongoing protest action, including new information, leaks from staff members, images, and footnotes.

But before I publish them, I’d like to offer four thoughts:

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1. The NGV is not exceptional, but target it anyway

Thank you to everyone who participated in the protest at the the NGV on Sunday. It was powerful and necessary. I hope to see this targeted action sustained and expanded.

Let’s remember, however, that the NGV is typical, not exceptional.

Let’s think clearly about what genuine, comprehensive divestment from Zionism in the arts would actually look like.

The National Gallery of Australia (NGA), for example, already maintains an opulent, gilded ‘Gandel Hall’.

The National Museum of Australia (NMA) maintains a ‘Gandel Atrium’; the State Library of Victoria (SLV) a ‘Pauline Gandel Children’s Quarter’; the Melbourne Museum a ‘Pauline Gandel Children’s Gallery’ and a ‘Gandel Gondwana Garden’. Gandel money is also behind Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and many other ‘public’ spaces and cultural institutions¹.

And that’s before we even start talking about the range of spaces owned, influenced or infiltrated by the Besen Foundation, The Naomi Milgrom Foundation, the Leiblers, The Pratt Foundation, the Libermans, the Smorgon Foundation, Schwartz Media et al.

Zionism is not simply an external influence upon the arts, it is a deeply and thoroughly integrated component of the Australian colonial ruling class.

This, of course, is all occurring within the framework of an ongoing western imperialist occupation of Aboriginal Land.

However, the timing of NGV’s secret Zionist dinner ­— and the re-naming of its hall ­— cannot be ignored. Let’s keep interrupting the NGV. The momentum of this targeted action is essential.

But let’s interrupt the NGV while deeply knowing that the Australian culture industry itself is irredeemable.

We’ve now witnessed 662 relentless days of near-universal cowardice, corruption, and capitulating silence from every establishment creative institution, every ‘edgy’ gallerist, every ‘subversive’ curator.

Many of these people have spent their entire careers extracting profit and acclaim from ‘decolonial’ aesthetics. Yet, I can count the number of successful contemporary artists who have publicly opposed the genocide of Palestinians — and the overwhelming complicity of their own industry — on one hand.

What more evidence do we need?

If you do need more evidence, there’s a seven-decade-high pile of receipts before 7 October 2023.

The renaming of NGV’s ‘Great Hall’ does not represent the sudden degradation of an otherwise noble institution.

It’s simply the latest reaffirmation of the NGV’s continuous violence, coloniality and complicity. The NGV has been a repulsive, seething pile of anti-Indigenous garbage since 1861.

If you still think reform is an option you’re not paying attention. The whole system must and will be burnt to the ground.

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2. ‘Matt Chun is targeting Jews!’

Never in my life have I bothered indulging this incessant, barrel-scraping nonsense. And I’m less inclined than ever to do so. Squealing ‘antisemitism’ has always been the Zionist’s one cheap trick, and it’s no longer fooling anyone.

However, let’s equip ourselves with the facts, so that we can confidently identify the Gandels — and the thoroughly Zionist-captured NGV — as legitimate targets:

• John and Pauline Gandel are long-time associates of genocidal Zionist leader Benjamin Netanyahu, contributing to his rise through occupation politics from the beginning of his career.

• A handwritten note² leaked to enemy media from Netanyahu’s office provides a list of his most valued supporters (read: lucrative donors), and Gandel is ranked as ‘tier 1’.

• In 1988, after serving as Zionist ambassador to the UN, Netanyahu moved to occupied Jaffa. There, the Gandels provided him and his then-wife with a seaside apartment, in which they lived rent free.

• On 13 October, 2023, just six days into the entity’s current genocidal campaign, John Gandel told the Financial Review³ that Israel had ‘no choice’ but to go ‘all out’ in Gaza, adding that ‘they can’t do it gently’. Palestinian families were already pulling the bodies of their loved ones from the rubble.

• Like his brother-in-law Marc Besen, John Gandel directly funds the expansion of the Zionist colonial project. As a white Polish Australian, Gandel nonsensically refers to occupied Palestine as his ‘homeland’, stating:

  ‘When it comes to supporting the state of Israel, we always saw it as our duty and obligation to strengthen the homeland.’

• In the Australian colony, the Gandel Foundation⁴ fund and collaborate with occupation lobbyists, propagandists, and colonial expansionist organisations, including the Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) and the United Israel Appeal (UIA).

• The ZFA is an openly genocidal anti-Palestinian hate group with close ties to the Australian government and media. Their primary activities are lobbyism, propaganda, disinformation, and the vitriolic targeting of Palestinians and their allies.

• The UIA, also known as Keren Hayesod, is a global Zionist organisation closely tied to the occupation regime. It was established in 1920 to fund and support the genocidal objectives of Zionism in Palestine.

• The Gandels also fund organisations dedicated to the Zionist indoctrination of young people. For example, they are the ‘Principal Australian Supporter’ of Birthright⁵, the propaganda tour organisation targeting Jewish youth.

  ‘Birthright’ trips perpetuate and expand the occupation of Palestine by erasing Palestinian history and Indigeneity, manufacturing a sense of Zionist ownership and entitlement on stolen land. On these trips, participants are inculcated with absurd colonial falsehoods at every turn.

• The Gandel Foundation’s ‘Gandel Rehabilitation Center’ in Zionist-occupied Jerusalem specifically treats and rehabilitates IOF soldiers who have been wounded or *stressed out* while participating in the killing, maiming, abduction, and dispossession of Palestinians ­— including a ‘specialised PTSD centre’.

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3. Is this a boycott?

To those who have decided to stop visiting the NGV on principle — all my love and solidarity to you!

I want to be clear though, it’s not my role to call boycotts. I do research and I write, so that we can all make better personal choices.

Formal picket lines must be established collectively by the communities impacted, in this case First Nations and Palestinian people.

An example of a boycott is Schwartz Media, and when I write about the Schwartzes, I do so in that context. A picket line has long been established by Palestinians, and is backed by their First Nations comrades. If you work for or engage with The Saturday Paper, Black Inc Books, The Monthly, Anna Schwartz Gallery or the Quarterly Essay, for example, you’re absolutely on the wrong side of a very clear picket line.

To date, no boycott has been called against the NGV. If ever it is, I will support and amplify that call.

The action on Sunday was not a picket line. It was a powerful act of protest and a call for divestment. So please don’t harass NGV staff or people who are visiting the gallery.

Direct your righteous rage at the building, the management, the executives, and the state violence workers (police).

My personal choice is that I would never enter the NGV (peacefully). Not because I’m observing a formal boycott, but simply because it’s an irredeemable cesspool of Zionism.

Personally, I would also encourage an ongoing escalation of bold, decentralised, eclectic, creative and devastating protest actions against the institution.

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4. I’m not a journalist

I’m an artist and children’s book creator. In an ideal world I would spend my time drawing rabbits and frogs. I think and write about institutional complicity out of moral necessity — because to say nothing would make me complicit.

The fact that people mistake my commentary for journalism is a monumental indictment on the actual industry of Australian state and corporate ‘journalism’ — a near-universal cohort of unprincipled pro-Israel careerists and shameless imperialist stenographers.

Again: if you think reform is an option you’re not paying attention. Australian media, too, must and will be burnt to the ground.

Revolution is necessarily destructive, but it is also generative. We will make new things.

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Protesters gather at the NGV on Sunday 27 July. Image: Free Palestine Coalition

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Thanks for reading Matt Chun’s Newsletter. I’m an independent artist, writer and picture book creator. To support my practice: visit my online store or consider becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter. I’m also a founding and current co-editor of revolutionary print periodical The Sunday Paper, an imprint of Slingshot Books.

AI policy: I never use generative AI during any part of my artmaking, writing or publishing process. If you consume my work you can be sure that the labour, creativity and language is my own.

1. The Gandels also have a large stake in healthcare, retail and other industries. I limit my writing to the arts, publishing and media, but please be aware that Zionist influence and infiltration reaches far beyond these fields.

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3.

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4. The Gandel Foundation’s current board is:

John Gandel, Chairman

Graham Goldsmith, Deputy Chairman

Pauline Gandel

Lisa Thurin

Steven Gandel

Barry Fradkin

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5.