In this ad-hoc column published by Art Industry Insights with Reena Devi, arts journalist and editor Reena Devi responds to news headlines with incisive analysis on our art and global systems.
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Important: The following article contains mentions of sexual assault. Please contact your country’s relevant sexual assault hotline or platform, such as RAINN, for help.
The “Epstein class”, with its ceaseless cascade of horrors, violence, and extremist causes, are a mere fraction of today’s globally networked elites.
The Epstein file drops by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), throughout December 2025 and on 30 January 2026, provide an unrelenting look into behind-the-scenes machinations that protect and enable this socioeconomic stratum.
The documents also confirm an unvarnished truth – the art world’s institutional and market systems have often provided a safe harbour for unrestrained power and wealth.
In doing so, these very same art systems have become an unintentional mirror, reflecting patterns of abuse and power that buffer the likes of the Epstein Class from the glare of the fourth estate, regulation, and law enforcement.
One such pervasive pattern is complicity.
While the legal definition of complicity is aiding and abetting a crime, it also describes a systemic culture of intense PR and legal machinery built on wilful ignorance and denial of toxic patterns of power, or worse, abuse.
This is often done for the sake of personal gain, be it monetary or social capital. Moreover, complicity is rooted in an entrenched fallacy that economies, governments, and cultural institutions would fall apart without the ultra-elites’ billions, technologies, and strategies.
‘The Epstein Class’ And Its Blind Eye
In the world of Jeffrey Epstein, complicity is everywhere.
There are the New York City gynaecologists, dermatologists, and personal physicians paid for and relied upon by Epstein to keep young girls and women used for trafficking “sexually fit”.
Most of them denied knowing about any “inappropriate conduct” by the convicted paedophile, with even one dermatologist expecting financial favours from the billionaire in return.
Some of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, who worked at the St Thomas airport close to the sex trafficker’s private island, are no different.
As The Guardian reported, Epstein maintained close relationships with a few of the officers to ease his legally ambiguous flow of goods and people, while often citing difficult behaviour amongst staff doing their due diligence.
Nonetheless, nobody does complicity better than those at the pinnacle of power, wealth, and influence.
Is The MoMA Complicit?
Just three years ago, longtime trustee of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and private equity billionaire Leon Black was accused of raping a teenager in Epstein’s townhouse in a federal lawsuit.
According to Hyperallergic, the alleged victim was 16 years old at the time, though court filings, stated “that she was born with Mosaic Down Syndrome and that her developmental age is around 12 years old.”
As originally reported by Urgent Matter last month, documents from the Epstein files reveal gruesome descriptions of alleged abuse by Black. This includes a spiral-bound notebook, with details of the year, location, and perpetrators of the alleged abuse, corresponding to the 2023 lawsuit.
However, a statement from Black’s attorney, Susan Estrich, sent to Hyperallergic this February, claims the victim in the lawsuit is “a fraud” and her birth family “says she makes up stories and she fabricates evidence.”
Yet, it is a well-known finding from credible investigative reporting that Epstein systematically targeted vulnerable young women and underage girls. They were often from low-income families, foster care, or with histories of abuse, because he knew society would not care about them or believe them.
While some of Black’s lawsuits accusing him of sexual abuse have been withdrawn or dismissed, the backlash regarding his ties to Epstein, including his approximately $100 million payments to the convicted sex offender, was intense enough for him to step down as MoMA Chairman in March 2021.
He remains a MoMA trustee to this day. The avid art collector is also owner of art book publisher Phaidon.
Museums and arts organisations remaining silent about nefarious activities by their boards and patrons is not new – the Sacklers provided ample evidence.
However, complicity for financial gain becomes more blatant with the art world’s historically favoured partner.
The Art World In Bed With Banks And Epstein
Bank of America (BofA) is widely known for supporting exhibitions at MoMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and beyond the US.
Deutsche Bank is also a major sponsor in the art world, from being a Global Lead Partner for Frieze Art Fairs worldwide since 2004 to supporting a panel series hosted by Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart since 2024.
Predictably, both banks have been identified as playing a part in Epstein’s sex trafficking and predatory circles.
This year, an anonymous victim of Epstein filed lawsuits against Bank of America (BofA) and The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY), accusing the banks of “participating in and financially benefiting from Jeffrey Epstein’s widespread and well-publicised sex-trafficking operation, as well as the direct financial benefits it received therefrom.”
Meanwhile, there have been investigative reports about Deutsche’s strong ties with Epstein as far back as 2020. In fact, after JPMorgan cut him off in 2013, the convicted sex offender moved hundreds of millions of dollars to the German bank, where he was allowed to send money overseas to cover young women’s expenses.
Deutsche has since paid regulatory fines for doing so.
In addition to their close ties with the Epstein class, these financial institutions have displayed questionable risk management practices, a damaging pattern for global systematically important banks (G-SIBs).
Deutsche previously loaned money repeatedly to US President Trump despite his lies about his net worth. BoFA had a damaging role in America’s major housing crisis in 2008.
Despite all of the above, powerful factions of the art world have serially turned a blind eye as both banks remain active corporate sponsors of the arts.
A Global System Of Complicity
This is more serious than a company logo on a banner at an art event. These cultural institutions fail to recognise that the art world’s complicity does not exist in a silo.
It is very much part of a global system of complicity reverberating through our social, economic, and geopolitical systems, wrecking maximum harm to our existential freedoms.
“There is a direct link between the apparent collapse of the multilateral system and its values and the Epstein files… It’s a system of complicity,” United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, told veteran journalist Mehdi Hasan last month.
Albanese previously called out the multilateral system for “decades of moral and political failure in a colonial world order sustained by a global system of complicity”.
In 2025, Albanese detailed the role of 63 states in Israel’s actions in both Gaza and the West Bank, through continued trade and diplomatic protection, weapons sales, joint trainings, and weaponisation of aid. She also revealed 48 corporations, including American tech giants Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, Microsoft, and Amazon, “embedded in an economy of genocide” in Gaza.
Corporate and state actors are similarly involved in the current escalating war in the Middle East. Rising tech company Anthropic’s Claude AI model was used by the US military in the first weekend of the war and still is. This is despite the US government and the company clashing due to the latter’s insistence on more safeguards.
Not to be outdone, OpenAI has taken Anthropic’s place, offering the government its military AI services.
Clearly, those operating within the corridors of power and unregulated industries, be it technology or the arts, are almost always willing to be complicit.
Their gain is prioritised above all else. Even moral and existential cost. All while the rest of us are serially told to make do with less.
Many would consider it far-fetched to draw a line from the art world’s bubble-like machinations to the unchecked power and raw wealth fiercely contesting multilateralism, sovereignty, and humanity today.
Yet, the Epstein class provide ceaseless evidence it is not just one line, it is a network.
Mostly, it is a network of destruction and violence masked by reputational laundering, silence, and opacity, well-honed talents possessed by the art world.
Stay tuned for more from The News Desk.
For exclusive updates on Art Industry Insights With Reena Devi, you can be a one-time or regular supporter.
You can also follow the platform on Instagram. Feel free to DM with commissions, tips, and leads.
This article is non-commissioned (unpaid). Future pieces for the column may be commissioned (paid) and will be disclosed accordingly. They will not include a Buy Me A Coffee link.
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