Goldsmiths’s Art Gallery Cuts Ties with Israel-Linked Donor After Boycott

Students at Goldsmiths University ended a months-long boycott of the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) after the gallery ended its relationship with donors Candida and Zak Gertler, whose names will be removed an exhibition space and the board.

The Gertlers, who last donated to CAA in 2017, were the main targets of protests organized by the student group Goldsmiths for Palestine. The group demanded that the school divest from the philanthropists over their alleged personal ties to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and financial support for his political campaigns. Zak Gertler’s wealth comes from a family real estate business.

The protests included a 27-day-long occupation of the gallery between May and June, forcing the CCA to temporarily close over. Student activists accused the Gertlers of supporting Israel’s war in Gaza by giving funds to the Jewish National Fund, a New York–based organization that funnels donations to West Bank settlements.

During the occupation, students replaced a plaque bearing the Gertler name with another bearing the name of Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian author and political prisoner who died in Israeli custody this past April at the age of 63. The group took over the gallery and mounted a week-long exhibition titled “People’s Exhibition for Palestine,” that showed the works of Palestinian artists.

In a statement to the Art Newspaper, which first reported the news, a CCA spokesperson confirmed the museum’s decision to remove the Gertler name from the gallery. The couple is still listed as one of ten donors under the gallery’s “major benefactors” category online. (The Gertlers were not reachable for comment.)

Candida Gertler has been a target of other divestment calls throughout the arts. In April, South African artist Gabrielle Goliath announced that she wouldn’t be taking funding from the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, a UK charity that Gertler cofounded with Yana Peel, who is no longer affiliated with the fund.