The trailer for the docu on the show "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present/HBO
Nude artist John Bonfidde is suing the Museum of Modern Art in New York, MOMA, for allegedly failing to prevent visitors from sexually assaulting him when he performed at an exhibition.
He claims that the museum staff "turned a blind eye" and did not do enough to prevent visitors from groping his body and touching his penis when he appeared naked in the exhibition "Marina Abramovich: The Artist is Present" in 2010.
In a lawsuit filed in Manhattan court last Monday, Bonfid claimed that five older men fondled his penis on seven different occasions.
Bonfid then worked as a "performer", recreating some of Marina Abramović's infamous earlier works.
As part of a piece called Imponderabilia, his job was to model motionless, nude, for 75 minutes while staring straight ahead at a woman in a similar pose.
As part of the exhibition, visitors had to squeeze between the two performers to enter the next gallery.
Bonfid claims the assaults were "horrifyingly similar" and describes how each of the five perpetrators who passed him, turned to the side to look at him, before lowering his hand down and "caressing and/or groping" his penis.
He described how each of them stopped for a moment to do this, before moving on to the next gallery room - and what's more, one of the criminals even made sure to stop several times in the passage and carry out his plot.
According to Bonfid's testimony, one of the men attacked him right in the view of the museum security guard and another was "filmed live by a camera crew, who happened to be filming the plaintiff's appearance at the time," the lawsuit states.
A third completed three rounds around the museum "non-consensually using the claimant's penis each round before finally being stopped by security."
"The sole purpose of such sexual touching was to humiliate or abuse the plaintiff, and to satisfy the sexual desire of the perpetrator," the lawsuit states, claiming that the groping "posed a serious risk of physical harm to the plaintiff, including a risk of causing damage to the plaintiff's genitals and/or a risk of infection transmitted through sexual contact ".
In a lawsuit filed 14 years after the attacks, Bonfid claims the museum did not post any verbal or written warnings intended to tell visitors not to touch the nude artists.
Furthermore, he says that museum staff were well aware that contact was an "ongoing problem" when there was even press coverage of the assaults, but the museum still failed to "take responsible action" to prevent it.
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Bonfid is now seeking damages of an unspecified amount as well as a jury trial - and is suing the museum for the "years of emotional distress" and the damage caused to his "mental health, body image and career".
The suit, filed under New York's Survivors Act, claims he didn't report the first assault because organizers promoted a "deal with it" culture if the unexpected happened during the show.
When he later notified the museum's security staff, they did remove the male attackers from the exhibit.
One of the perpetrators was allegedly a member of the museum corporation whose membership was canceled after the incident.
In the legal documents, John Bonfid also noted that another performer was fired for allegedly not remaining still on the first day of the show, causing him to remain silent while being sexually harassed to avoid a similar fate.
He also said that museum management refused to give him the identities of the men who touched him, which meant he was unable to press charges against them at the time.
"As a result of the messages he received during his MOMA-funded and MOMA-supervised training with Abramowitz... the plaintiff joined a MOMA community belief system in which performers were expected to submit, quietly and without question, to any behavior the performers might encounter, including repeated acts of sexual assault," it was claimed in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also states that Bonfid alerted museum security to each of the incidents and other performers reported similar behavior — including performer Matthew Rogers who told The Post at the time: "It can be a little sketchy. Sometimes, there's this feeling that, 'Oh, It's a bit disgusting' and then it goes away."
Eventually, the museum admitted that there was a problem with visitors sexually touching its models.
"We are well aware of the challenges posed by nude performers in exhibition galleries," the museum said in a statement to The Post at the time. "Any visitor who inappropriately touches or interferes with the performances is escorted out of the museum by MOMA security."
The museum also allegedly adopted a "signal system" to flag assaults and created a manual outlining a protocol for handling attendees after they acted inappropriately.
However, he did indeed never post signs or verbal warnings to museum visitors about the necessity not to touch the models while they were touring the exhibit.
The time window for filing the complaint expired last year, but the lawsuit says that Bonfid received an extension that was agreed upon before the time window closed.
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