Tuesday, April 09, 2024
Elder of ZiyonWhen the inaugural California Jewish Open exhibit opens at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco in June, the gallery walls will have several blank spaces where works of art were supposed to hang.The spaces will represent the “missing perspectives” of seven self-identified Jewish anti-Zionist artists who withdrew their pieces in a coordinated protest after museum officials said they would not meet several of the artists’ demands.The artists, who are part of a group calling themselves California Jewish Artists for Palestine, had requested, among other things, that the museum divulge the names of its funders and divest from all funding sources associated with Israel. They also expressed concern about their art appearing alongside works that reflected different ideas about Israel from their own.
... {T]he artists sought extraordinary control over their artwork. They requested that the museum amend the terms they agreed to by giving them the ability to modify or withdraw their works from the exhibit at any time, and to have autonomy over wall texts, artists statements and other framing. (In their Instagram statement, the artists wrote that they were concerned about “potential curatorial both ‘sides-ism’” and about the possibility that their pieces would appear next to ones that “grieve Jewish deaths without acknowledging the genocide of Palestinians.”)
So these Jewish artists submitted their artwork to be included in a Jewish museum, and then refused to show their artwork alongside other artists who aren't as anti-Zionist as they are.
Artists initially chose to make a statement to the @jewseum by submitting to the Open Call in a coordinated effort to bring visibility to anti-zionist Jewish artists in California, with anticipation that their works would be rejected by museum curators. While several of the pieces were accepted, the museum’s responses and inability to meet artists’ demands, including transparency around funding and a commitment to BDS, reaffirmed for artists the importance of adhering to and demanding PACBI (The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) in the Arts. The artists call on all cultural workers worldwide to join the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement to abstain from collaborating with institutions that continue to normalize genocide and Israeli Apartheid.
They are saying that they really never had the intention of exhibiting alongside any Jewish art that disagreed with their extremist anti-Israel positions. They wanted to be rejected and then blame the museum for "censorship."
When the museum accepted some of their artwork, they had to create unacceptable demands, like the museum supporting BDS and (implicitly) for the museum to censor any Zionist artwork as a precondition to exhibit theirs. This then gave themselves an excuse to withdraw with what they consider honor.
Yet, amazingly, they are still claiming that they are the ones being censored!
Look how hard the liberal Jewish curators of the museum tried to accommodate the people who hate them and wanted only to embarrass them. Indeed, the theme of the exhibition is supposed to be "connection." The only rules for artwork is that it not include "antisemitic, Islamophobic, or xenophobic tropes, sentiments, or undertones." The haters wanted to prove that the curators were hypocrites - and they only proved that they were.
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