Nan Goldin Challenges Germany on What Artists Can Say About Israel

A speech by the artist at an exhibition of her work was followed by protests from her supporters and an uproar in the news media.

The artist and activist Nan Goldin makes no secret of her views about Israel and the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

She has signed high-profile protest letters calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “a genocide.” She has marched with pro-Palestinian protesters and was arrested at a demonstration in New York. In a magazine interview last year, she said she had “been on a cultural boycott of Israel for my whole life.”

So a major exhibition of Goldin’s photo slide shows and films that opened over the weekend at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin seemed like a high-profile anomaly in Germany, where lawmakers have said that support for boycotting Israel is antisemitic, and where artists who have taken positions like Goldin’s have had museum shows canceled, prizes suspended and talks shut down.

But none of those artists were as famous or influential as Goldin, who has been an art-world star for decades.

“If an artist in my position is allowed to express their political stance without being canceled,” she said in a speech at the show’s public opening, “I hope I will be paving a path for other artists to speak out without being censored.” Goldin, who is Jewish and American, accused Germans of conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism and looking away from the horrors unfolding in Gaza, which she repeatedly described as a genocide.