A man who appeared naked at the exhibition Marina Abramović 2010, “The Artist is Present”, at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), is now suing the institution for allowing him to be groped on several occasions during the highly successful exhibition.
The plaintiff, John Bonafede, detailed his allegations in a complaint reviewed by Artnet News, filed Monday in a New York court. Bonafede claims to have been groped on seven separate occasions while participating in a re-enactment of Abramović's seminal participatory artwork “Imponderabilia” (1977), which features nude models facing each other in a narrow doorway as gallery-goers try to squeeze through.
“The circumstances of each of these assaults were eerily similar,” the complaint alleged. In each case, the attacker – always an “older man” – “dropped his hand, secretly slipped it between [Bonafede's] legs and caressed and/or felt [his] genitals, lingering for a moment before moving on to the next room."
Bonafede said he did not report the first attack, which left him in a “state of shock,” but reported all subsequent incidents to MoMA security personnel. He was later informed that the four individuals he reported had been expelled from the museum. One of them was a “corporate member” of MoMA who had his membership revoked.
However, because MoMA did not release the identities of her attackers, Bonafede said she was unable to bring individual charges against them.
He was not the only “Imponderabilia” participant subject to inappropriate behavior during “The Artist is Present”. Reports of groping, verbal harassment and even stalking were covered in reports at the time. Bonafede's lawsuit cites these articles as proof that MoMA knowingly placed the “Imponderabilia” artists in “highly vulnerable and risky positions on a daily basis.”
It alleged that the museum “turned a blind eye” and “failed to establish, implement or enforce policies and procedures to protect the health, safety and well-being of…artists, and to prevent them from being sexually assaulted in the first place.” The author also pointed out that the exhibition did not include signs indicating that sexual touching by artists was not permitted.
With the complaint, Bonafede seeks a jury trial to determine the damages he is owed for the “suffering and emotional harm” caused by “MoMA’s negligence.”
Representatives for the Museum of Modern Art did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bonafede's lawsuit was filed under New York's Adult Survivors Act, which suspended the statute of limitations in sexual assault cases for a period of one year between November 2022 and November 2023. According to the “ Daily Beast” Bonafede received permission to file his complaint after the act's window expired last fall.
Source: Artnet News