“The targeted campaign of attacks against me and my company that has been waged these past several months has threatened to undermine the important work of the Whitney,” Kanders said in his resignation letter. “I joined this board to help the museum prosper. I do not wish to play a role, however inadvertent, in its demise.”
Kanders owns Safariland, a Jacksonville, Florida-based manufacturer of law enforcement and military supplies including bulletproof vests, bomb-defusing robots, gun holsters and tear gas. Protesters had demanded Kanders’ resignation, or removal from the board, after reports that Safariland’s tear-gas grenades had been used against migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and elsewhere during protests.
The controversy thrust the museum into the political arguments roiling the country, and came at a time of increasing scrutiny of where cultural institutions get their money. Kanders’ departure could embolden other protest movements that have demanded, with some success, that museums part ways with major donors or trustees.
The growing influence of these movements, and their potential to drive away major sources of museums’ revenue, such as Kanders, was evident in the reaction of Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s director.
“Here’s a man who has given a tremendous amount of his time and money to young, often edgy and radical artists — somebody who is very progressive — that’s one of the ironies of all this,” Weinberg said.
In what amounted to a brief counterprotest, hedge fund titan Kenneth C. Griffin also stepped down from the board Thursday, during a telephone call with other board members, according to a person who was on the call. Griffin, a billionaire whose name is on the Whitney’s lobby, was dismayed by what he described as the museum’s left-wing tilt, according to the person on the call.
But Griffin apparently reconsidered, and decided to stay. “I’m a trustee of the Whitney and excited to be on the board,” he said in a telephone interview Thursday evening. When pressed about what had transpired earlier in the day, Griffin said, “I think board conversations are private,” adding, “I haven’t resigned.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.