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Abstract
This article presents an overview of Palestinian exhibition making in the twentieth century. It addresses an absence of academic engagement with how, starting in the 1920s, a repertoire of Palestinian pedagogical and representational materials, temporary and makeshift spaces, and multiple protodiplomatic and unionized efforts under the Palestinian Liberation Organization informed a culture of exhibition making that created critical sites for: cultivating and critiquing taste within art movements and among Palestinians; operationalizing national sentiment and political consciousness; and mobilizing international support around the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. Specifically, the article accounts for the Palestinian mobilization of exhibitions in response to European and Zionist expansionism (1917–48), as a social praxis of community building and resilience (1948–64), and as a form of political resistance through the radical internationalization of Palestinian cultural affairs (1964–87). It culminates with a discussion of the first intifada and the morphing of exhibition culture into the Palestinian Authority’s state-building project following the Oslo Accords (1987–93).
Notes
1 Abdul Latif ‘Akl, ed., Introduction, Ninth Annual Exhibition of the Palestinian League of Artists [in Arabic] (YMCA Jerusalem, July 1986), 4. All translations in this article were done by the author.
2 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780–1950 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 20.
3 “Guestbook Entries for Zulfa al-Sa’di,” in Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, ed. Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers, and Nada Shabout (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018), 78.
4 Beshara B. Doumani, “Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History,” JPS 21, no. 2 (1992): 7, https://doi.org/10.2307/2537216; Tina Sherwell, “Intimate Landscapes/ Dissected Terrains” Palestine c/o Venice, ed. Salwa D. Mikdadi (Beirut: Mind the gap, 2009), 25.
5 Whereas Western powers greatly intervened in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman Empire explored European institutional development as a model for its own modernization projects. Beatrice St. Laurent and Himmet Taşkömür “The Imperial Museum of Antiquities in Jerusalem, 1890–1930: An Alternate Narrative,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 55 (Autumn 2013): 7, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/137363; Nazmi al-Ju’beh, “Palestinian Identity and Cultural Heritage,” in Of Times and Spaces in Palestine: The Flows and Resistances of Identity, ed. Roger Heacock (Beirut: Presses de l’Ifpo, 2008), 211.
6 Nadi Abusaada, “Self-Portrait of a Nation: The Arab Exhibition in Mandate Jerusalem, 1931–34,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 77 (Spring 2019): 124, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/235369. In its meetings, the 1924 Pavilion Committee blamed the low level of Arab participation on unwarranted levels of Arab skepticism, but this ignores the fact that the committee made little more than a token effort to reach out to Arab businessmen. Nicholas E. Roberts, “Palestine on Display: The Palestine Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition of 1924,” Arab Studies Journal 15, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 72–73, 76, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27934007.
7 Kamal Boullata, Palestinian Art: 1850–2005 (London: Saqi Books, 2009), 76.
8 Boullata, Palestinian Art, 81–83.
9 The first public exhibition rooms established under the British Mandate were (in part) exhibiting archaeological collections inherited from the Ottoman Imperial Museum and were based at the Citadel of David until their relocation to the British School of Archaeology at Way House in 1924 (subsequently referred to as the Palestine Museum of Antiquities). With the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917–18 and subsequent administration of the British Mandate for Palestine after the end of the World War I, the collections of the Ottoman Museum were made continuous with the British Palestine Department of Antiquities exhibition rooms, referred to as the Palestine Museum of Antiquities (1921–30), and then later with the Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM), which opened to the public in 1938. The establishment of the Palestine Museum of Antiquities, which would come to inform plans for PAM, marked the initiation of a division of the collection with a focus toward retaining collections of Biblical archaeology, and establishing separate collections and spaces for viewing Jewish and Islamic art. The Jewish collection was moved to the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts (renamed the Jewish National Museum Bezalel in 1925), while the Supreme Muslim Council (1921) created the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem (1923) in the esplanade of the noble sanctuary of al-Aqsa Mosque compound (moved to its present location in 1929). The Islamic Museum had three directors who acted as custodians—Sheikh Deeb Joudeh, Sheikh Yacoub al-Ozbaki, and Jalal al-Mamluk—before it fell under the directorship of archaeologist Amal Abul-Hajj in 1973. It was during her directorship that the restoration, inventory, and arrangement of the collection was incubated within a contemporary curatorial practice (not to suggest that her predecessors did not perform a curatorial function). After the museum was closed in 1975 for refurbishment, art historian Marwan Abu Khalaf was appointed director in 1978 and developed a more rigorous collections appraisal and catalogue. “Interview with Mr. Marwan Abu Khalaf: Director of the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem” [in Arabic], al-Talee’ah, July 5, 1979, 7, Palestinian Museum Digital Archive; Boullata, Palestinian Art, 89–91.
10 Boullata, Palestinian Art, 76–77.
11 Nisa Ari, “Competition in the Cultural Sector: Handicrafts and the Rise of the Trade Fair in British Mandate Palestine,” in European Cultural Diplomacy and Arab Christians in Palestine, 1918–1948: Between Contention and Connection, ed. Karène S. Summerer and Sary Zananiri (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), 229.
12 Abusaada. “Self-Portrait of a Nation,” 124–25.
13 “While the fair’s industrial exhibits were motivated by national interests, the cultural displays solidified its pan-Arab objective, conveying the urgency of the Arab nation’s unified cause against imperialism.” Laura Tibi, “‘The Roots for a Palestinian Nahda’: Zulfa al-Sa‘di and the Advent of Palestinian Modern Art,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 83 (Autumn 2020): 107, https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1650652; Zulfa al-Sa’di was the first woman known to have studied under Nicola Saig (1863–1942), a leading pioneer in the secularization of Russian Orthodox icons, which would be emulated by younger artists who witnessed (took part in) the evolution of Palestinian national identity through easel painting. Her choice to explicitly exhibit for exhibition’s sake (aesthetic contemplation) rather than to sell her works for monetary gain particularly stood out. Boullata, Palestinian Art, 68–70; As Abusaada put it, “the significance of al-Sa‘di’s contribution to the Arab Exhibition lies not only in her inclusion as a woman, but also in the high level of aesthetic awareness that her contribution displayed.” Abusaada, “Self-Portrait of a Nation,” 131.
14 Boullata refers to this as a critical moment in Palestinian cultural history, where the contrast between her work and that of artists who were more traditionally inspired by the visual codes of Arabic calligraphy and Islamic geometrical designs, would become a major preoccupation for generations of Palestinian artists. Boullata, Palestinian Art, 89–91.
15 Boullata, Palestinian Art, 89–91; the Palestinian newspaper al-Arab described the Arab Exhibition as the roots for a Palestinian renaissance (nahda). Tibi, “The Roots for a Palestinian Nahda,” 107.
16 Most notable of these collections are the collections of Jerusalem Mayor Raghib al-Nashashibi (1881–1951) and the physician Tawfiq Canaan (1882–1964) whose amulet collection formed the core of Birzeit University Museum’s collection after 1995. Boullata, Palestinian Art, 72.
17 “Exhibition of a Palestinian Artist (1953) Harun Hashim Rashid,” Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, ed. Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers, and Nada Shabout (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018), 157–58.
18 Ahmad H. Sa’di, “Catastrophe, Memory and Identity: Al-Nakbah as a Component of Palestinian Identity,” Israel Studies 7, no. 2 (Summer 2002): 185–86, https://www.jstor.org/stable/30245590.
19 Ghazi Falah, “The 1948 Israeli-Palestinian War and Its Aftermath: The Transformation and De-signification of Palestine’s Cultural Landscape,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86, no. 2 (1996): 257, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1996.tb01753.x.
20 Drawing from extended archival research, historian Adam Raz investigated how Israeli civilians and soldiers alike were involved in looting the properties of the displaced Palestinian population. His research, which is only focused on movables, “items that could be stuffed into bags or loaded onto vehicles,” investigates how the contents of tens of thousands of homes, stores, and factories, and of mechanical equipment and farm produce, were looted en masse in the months following the 1948 Nakba. Ofer Aderet, “Jewish Soldiers and Civilians Looted Arab Neighbors’ Property en Masse in ‘48. The Authorities Turned a Blind Eye,” Haaretz, October 3, 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2020-10-03/ty-article-magazine/.highlight/jews-looted-arab-property-en-masse-in-48-the-authorities-let-them/0000017f-e7d4-d62c-a1ff-ffff83bd0000.
21 Yezid Sayigh, “Armed Struggle and State Formation,” JPS 26, no. 4 (1997): 17–32, https://doi.org/10.2307/2537904; Sa’di, “Catastrophe, Memory and Identity,” 176.
22 Sayigh, “Armed Struggle and State Formation,” 18–19. According to author and social scientist Ahmad H. Sa’di, the space of “national narrative” starts to be configured through the representation of individual viewpoints or life stories which the broader community can identify. Sa’di, “Catastrophe, Memory and Identity,” 176.
23 Ismail Shammout, Art in Palestine (Kuwait: Al Qabas Printing Press, 1989), 59, 62–63.
24 Tina Sherwell, “Curatorial Expeditions: The Ramallah Safari,” Stedelijk Studies, no. 1 (Fall 2014), https://stedelijkstudies.com/journal/curatorial-expeditions-ramallah-safari/.
25 Sherwell, “Curatorial Expeditions;” Vera Tamari, “Tawfik Canaan–Collectionneur Par Excellence,” in Archives, Museums and Collecting Practices in the Modern Arab World, ed. Sonja Mejcher-Atassi and John Pedro Schwartz (London and New York: Routledge, 2016), 87.
26 “Art in the Time of the Palestinian Revolution (1971) Kamal Boullata,” Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, ed. Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers, and Nada Shabout (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018), 327.
27 Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010): 199.
28 Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti, “Transnational Solidarity Networks and Speculative Histories: 1960s–1980s,” in Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity and Museums in Exile (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018), 28.
29 Ismail Shammout, “The Role of Art Exhibitions” [in Arabic], Shu’un Filastiniyya, no. 4 (September 1971): 268–69, Palestine Research Center Digital Archive.
30 Ismail Shammout, “The Palestinian Artistic Endeavour” [in Arabic], Shu’un Filastiniyya, no. 98 (January 1980): 137–38, Palestine Research Center Digital Archive.
31 Shammout, “The Palestinian Artistic Endeavour,” 139.
32 Shammout, “The Role of Art Exhibitions,” 267–68. Shammout expressly details the role of the art exhibition and the framework required to ensure its success: (a) providing supplementary exhibition content that is objective and concise but impactful in terms of language, and produced within a rich frame that is of high production value; (b) a focus toward the exhibition hall, with special attention given to its space, services, and suitability, as well as its geographic location and accessibility to visitors; (c) a multifaceted media campaign and coordination operation launched not less than three weeks before the exhibition is set to open, and which consolidates efforts and delegates tasks to representation offices, local collectives, student and labor unions, and solidarity movements; produces exhibition posters, as well as an exhibition catalogue including images and suitable descriptions; circulates exhibition posters and other advertisements in public spaces, and in various media outlets for the duration of the exhibition no less than one week before it is set to open; and conducts media outreach with different print, television, and radio broadcasting press to provide coverage and reviews of the exhibition and its news; and finally (d) ensuring that suitable and articulate guides are present throughout the duration of the exhibition to accompany visitors and provide explanations.
33 Shammout, “The Palestinian Artistic Endeavour,” 138.
34 Farouk Wadi, “Indications of Palestinian Culture and the Revolution” [in Arabic], Shu’un Filastiniyya, no. 134 (January 1983): 100–11, Palestine Research Center Digital Archive.
35 Sliman Mansour, “Interview with Sliman Mansour by Mohanad Yaqubi,” in Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums in Exile, ed. Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018), 211–12.
36 Anneka Lenssen, “Material Support: On Arab Artists’ Unions and Solidarity,” in Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums in Exile, ed. Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018), 143.
37 Lenssen, “Material Support,” 143; Catherine Dossin, “The Brush and the Kalashnikov: The Political Vision of the Jeune Peinture from Paris to Beirut,” in Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums in Exile, ed. Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018), 281, 289.
38 Rasha Salti, “Around the Postcolony and the Museum: Curatorial Practice and Decolonizing Exhibition Histories,” in Decolonizing Museums (L’internationale Online, 2015), 135–47.
39 Headed by Japanese art critic and literary critic Ichirō Hariu (1925–2010). Nakajima Izumi, “Dream for Solidarity: Palestinian Art, JAALA, and Haryu Ichiro in the 1970s and 1980s,” in Past Disquiet: Artists, International Solidarity, and Museums in Exile, ed. Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti (Warsaw: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2018), 163, 165.
40 Lenssen, “Material Support,” 160.
41 Elias Khoury, “Positions” [in Arabic], Shu’un Filastiniyya, no. 34 (July 1977): 185, Palestine Research Center Digital Archive.
42 Lisa Taraki, “The Development of Political Consciousness among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, 1967–1987,” in Intifada: Palestine at the Crossroads, ed. Jamal R. Nassar and Roger Heacock (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1990), 64; Tamari, “Tawfik Canaan,” 85–86.
43 Tamari, “Tawfik Canaan,” 85–86.
44 Al-Ju’beh, “Palestinian Identity and Cultural Heritage,” 211; Tamari, “Tawfik Canaan,” 85.
45 Shammout, Art in Palestine, 76–77.
46 Ismail Shammout, “Plastic Art in Occupied Palestine” [in Arabic], Shu’un Filastiniyya, no. 195 (June 1989): 77, Palestine Research Center Digital Archive; Rana Anani, “Why Were Artworks Lost? On the History of Palestinian Art from the Perspective of Loss” al-Hoash Gallery, December 13, 2021, https://alhoashgallery.org/research-stories-and-papers/.
47 Siham Wahbeh, “Interview with Artist ‘Imad ‘Abdel Wahab” [in Arabic], al-Hadaf 11, no. 470 (January 1980): 46–47, Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
48 Lenssen, “Material Support,” 155; “The Palestinian People’s Consciousness and Aesthetic Expression (1975) Mustafa al-Hallaj,” in Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents, ed. Anneka Lenssen, Sarah Rogers, and Nada Shabout (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2018), 392.
49 As quoted in Wahbeh, “Interview with Artist ‘Imad ‘Abdel Wahab,” 46–47.
50 Nabil Anani, “New Horizons” [in Arabic], al-Talee’ah, December 25, 1979, 7, Palestinian Museum Digital Archive; Kareem Dabbah, “The Folk Arts Museum,” [in Arabic], al-Talee’ah, January 3, 1980, 7, Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
51 Anani, “New Horizons;” Dabbah, “The Folk Arts Museum.”
52 Sliman Mansour, “A Museum of Folk Arts in Jerusalem: A Bridge between Past and Future” [in Arabic], al-Talee’ah, December 25, 1979, 7, Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
53 Shammout, “Plastic Art in Occupied Palestine,” 77; as quoted in Kareem Dabbah, “Artist Nabil Anani’s Solo Exhibition in Gallery 79 in Ramallah” [in Arabic], al-Talee’ah, July 17, 1980, 7, Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
54 Israeli authorities began storming the exhibition gallery from its sixth public exhibition, initially taking pictures of the works before returning to confiscate them. “Statement of Protest by Artists in the West Bank and Gaza to the Closing of Gallery 79” [in Arabic], al-Talee’ah, December 25, 1985, 6, Palestinian Museum Digital Archive.
55 Lenssen, “Material Support,” 151–52.
56 Shammout, “Plastic Art in Occupied Palestine,” 77.
57 Shammout, Art in Palestine, 76–77.
58 Visitor to an exhibition of Palestinian and Israeli artists hosted at El-Hakawati National Theatre in Jerusalem in August 1988 (showcasing work by twenty-five Palestinian and eight Israeli artists). As quoted in Shammout, “Plastic Art in Occupied Palestine,” 81.
59 Adam Hanieh, “The Oslo Illusion,” Jacobin, April 21, 2013, https://jacobin.com/2013/04/the-oslo-illusion/; Rashid Khalidi, “Historical Landmarks in the Hundred Years’ War on Palestine,” JPS 47, no. 1 (2017): 15, https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2017.47.1.6.
60 Rema Hammami, “NGOs: The Professionalisation of Politics.” Race & Class 37, no. 2 (October 1995): 52, https://doi.org/10.1177/030639689503700200.
61 Ruba Salih and Sophie Richter-Devroe, “Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and beyond: On the Politics of Art, Aesthetics, and Affect,” Arab Studies Journal 22, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 9, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24877897.
62 Salih and Richter-Devroe, “Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and beyond,” 9–10.
63 Al-Hallaj, “The Palestinian People’s Consciousness and Aesthetic Expression,” 392.
64 Salih and Richter-Devroe, “Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and beyond,” 9.
65 Salih and Richter-Devroe, “Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and beyond,” 9.
66 Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (Oxford: Oneworld, 2006): 38–39.
67 Lenssen. “Material Support,” 159.
68 Homi K. Bhabha, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation,” in The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994) 199–244.
69 Al-Hallaj, “The Palestinian People’s Consciousness and Aesthetic Expression,” 392.
70 Charles Tripp, The Power and the People: Paths of Resistance in the Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 307; Geneviève Zubrzycki, ed., National Matters: Materiality, Culture, and Nationalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017): 193.
71 Al-Hallaj, “The Palestinian People’s Consciousness and Aesthetic Expression,” 327.
72 Al-Hallaj, “The Palestinian People’s Consciousness and Aesthetic Expression,” 193.
73 Zubrzycki, National Matters, 17.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Ali T. As’ad
Ali T. As’ad is an architect, curator, editor, and educator based in Amsterdam. As’ad is currently working on his doctorate examining the praxis of Palestinian exhibition making and museum practices as part of a broader investigation of the incongruity between the political space of the state and the cultural space of the nation in the twenty-first-century condition.