South Bank Centre chair Misan Harriman announces intention to leave role in Autumn

The Chairman of the South Bank Centre, who was reportedly the focus of “urgent investigations” earlier this month into his social media activity, has announced that he will step down from the position in the Autumn, maintaining that he had always planned to do so.

Misan Harriman, whose second term as chair of the prestigious arts centre is due to end in a few months, confirmed that he would not be looking to continue in the role, with a spokesperson for the venue confirming that he had made that clear to them earlier this year.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Harriman wrote that he had “decided way before this madness that I was going to do two terms,” he said. “I came on just after Covid, two terms, then handing the baton to whoever the next chairman will be. We will find out in due course and of course I am going to support that.”

As reported by The Times two weeks ago, Lisa Nandy, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport had written to Labour Peer Lord Mendelssohn that “the Southbank Centre is currently conducting an internal investigation using its established internal process for handling complaints and allegations against staff, including governors.

“They have also referred themselves to the Charity Commission, with a response due to them on the internal investigation by mid-June. Additionally, the Charity Commission is assessing concerns raised in the media and will report shortly on what further action they intend to take.”

Harriman, the son of a Nigerian billionaire who made his name as a photographer during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, regularly attends anti-Israel marches in London, photographing what he refers to as “observations” by members of the crowd. These have included signs exhibiting Holocaust inversion – people likening the actions of the Nazis against Jews with that of Israelis against Palestinians, as well as examples of people making the triangle insignia – which has become widely associated with Hamas support – with their hands.

The photographer had also previously expressed sympathy for hostages taken by Hamas.

In an interview for Dazed magazine published in January, Harriman said that “We cannot stop until we see the full liberation of Palestine”, describing Israel as “maintaining one of the most advanced systems of racialised violence the world has ever witnessed…a system fundamentally rooted in white supremacy”. Later in the interview, Harriman said: “The demon at the top of what is going on in Palestine is the same one fuelling the hellscapes in Sudan, Congo, Haiti, and Yemen. It is the same patriarchal, hyper-violent, capitalist, neocolonial framework that forces us to fight for collective liberation around the world… When you see photographs of the Grenfell protests beside those of Palestine, you begin to understand that it is the same greed…the same folly of man, that allowed people to burn alive in central London while children are being sniped by grown men in Gaza.”

In the same interview, Harriman said that “in 2020, when my BLM photographs were first published, they happened to align neatly with the prevailing narrative. My Palestine protest photos, on the other hand, do not operate within the same landscape of performance – or, more precisely, they do not serve Western interests. No major outlet would dare show such emotional or humanising depictions of a movement directly challenging the underlying structures of Western imperialism. Palestine is the one issue that makes everyone malfunction.”

As reported by The Times, The Arts Council said: “We look carefully at all concerns that are raised with us. We are not a regulatory body, and we can’t make, interpret or enforce the law, but we can ensure that the organisations we fund have the relevant policies and processes in place, and that they follow them.”

The Charity Commission said: “We have opened a regulatory compliance case to continue assessing concerns raised in the media about comments made by the chair of Southbank Centre. As part of this, we are engaging with the charity’s trustees to gather more information.”