The artist John Bonafede has sued the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York for failing to prevent visitors from groping him during a Marina Abramovic exhibition in 2010 in which he appeared naked, according to the British media The Guardian.
In his lawsuit, according to the aforementioned media, John Bonafede claims to have been sexually assaulted seven times by five different visitors while performing during the six weeks that the exhibition lasted.
The exhibition, The Guardian indicates, required two naked artists to stand face to face in a doorway, 18 inches apart, for more than an hour. Visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to pass through the threshold of said door.
The British media adds that the artist points out that the attacks were always carried out by older men and followed a “disturbingly similar” pattern, in which the alleged attackers turned towards him before touching his genitals. Although the alleged victim claims she did not report the first incident due to shock, she says she informed security and the exhibition’s stage manager about subsequent attacks.
The lawsuit claims that the museum “had actual knowledge of ongoing sexual assaults against many of its worker-artists at the exhibition, but willfully and negligently failed to take corrective action to prevent the assaults from being repeated,” according to The Guardian.
