In what amounted to a counterprotest, another prominent board member, hedge fund titan Kenneth C. Griffin, stepped down hours later, citing what he described as the museum’s left-wing tilt.
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 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.”
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 and Griffin, was evident in the reaction of Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney’s director.
Of Kanders, he said, “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.”
But for those who had called on Kanders to leave, the day was a joyous one. The eight artists who withdrew from the Biennial said that they would now remain in the show. (Their works had not yet been removed.) And the group that led the protests, Decolonize This Place, said that it was heartened by Kanders’ departure, thanked the museum for heeding its calls while also suggesting that the group was not done demanding changes.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.