Italian culture workers and arts collectives, including the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), S.a.L.E. Docks, Biennalocene, and Galassia, have announced they will join trade unions in a 'general cultural strike' on June 12. The strike aims to support Palestine and champion workers' rights, building on momentum from a massive pro-Palestine and pro-workers strike on May 8 that protested the Venice Biennale's inclusion of Israel and Russia, during which at least twenty-seven national pavilions partially or fully closed.
This strike matters because it directly links precarious labor conditions in the cultural sector to broader political issues, specifically the war in Palestine and institutional complicity through 'art-washing' and arms funding. By connecting unstable work conditions—short contracts, unpaid labor, no benefits—to the ability of institutions to ignore genocide, the action challenges the art world's political neutrality and demands systemic change in how cultural institutions operate and fund themselves.