Jason Jones joined a couple dozen of his fellow artists and activists outside the Brooklyn Museum on Tuesday, where the Brooklyn Real Estate Summit was underway inside. Jones arrived with a handcrafted sign to express his belief that the museum, by renting out space to the summit, was helping the very developers who are pricing artists out of the borough.

Jones' sign was a stick adorned with an orange tent that was big enough for sleeping humans and covered with slogans like, "Foreclose on Developers, Not People," and, "Affordable Housing for All."

Protester outside the Brooklyn Museum prepares to place a slogan-bearing tent on a stick, which will become his picket sign. (Jim O'Grady / WNYC)

He wanted to let the museum know that with homelessness on the rise and luxury housing pushing into traditionally working-to-middle class New York neighborhoods, real estate pros should not be encouraged in their work by a major cultural institution.

The Brooklyn Museum disagreed: in a statement, a spokesperson said the museum didn't necessarily endorse groups to whom it rents space.

Then Jones entered something like an irony vortex. He said the museum had asked protesting artists like himself to show their signs at an exhibit planned in the coming months about the recent history of protest in Brooklyn, including the current one against the museum. "They actually invited me to show this exact piece that I'm holding above my head," Jones said. Asked if he thought the offer was intended to co-opt him, Jones paused before musing, "Well that's the question, isn't it?"

Protester Imani Henry of the neighborhood group, "Equality for Flatbush," said he was simply dismayed to watch his neighborhood become increasingly expensive.

"Gentrification is bad for everyone," Henry said. "The only people it's good for are the folks inside the Brooklyn Museum, the folks that want to profit from our neighborhoods, the folks that want to divide and conquer."

UPDATE: Beka Economopoulos, a member of the art collective that makes the tent-on-a-pole described above, which she calls "mili-tents," said the Brooklyn Museum contacted them in May and asked to display the piece at the museum's upcoming "Agitprop!" show. The group agreed. Then came the Real Estate Summit this week, which the group decided to protest using their mili-tents. "It felt to us that these pieces belonged outside in a real life protest about displacement, not just inside as part of a historical retrospective," Economopoulos said of the mili-tents.