By Hrag Vertanian
THE fact that the Palestinian Museum even exists may surprise some people, not because of the wealth of talent that clearly exists in these lands, but because it suggests a type of normalcy to life in an area that continues to be under occupation. When the project was first announced there were conversations about creating a museum that would reflect the reality of Palestinian life, recognizing that not all Palestinians would be able to even visit it because of Israeli border restrictions against people of Palestinian origin. Then the roughly $30-million transnational museum opened without a major “exhibition,” or at least the type of exhibition we typically envision in art museums. It was a more low-key affair, focusing on objects we often associate with historical displays, but that was also because of the real problems of occupation.
“Until Israel recognize(s) most of the Unesco protocols which protect imported goods in the museum world,” Museum Chairperson Omar Al Qattan told The National, “we can’t really bring anything in except under consular or ambassadorial cover, which means it’s always going to be a problem borrowing or exchanging exhibition objects.”
That challenge is important, because a museum today is still often categorized by its landmark treasures, the works that attract crowds. It’s a reality that has inspired artists to think creatively, and one Palestinian artist, Khaled Hourani, highlighted it best in his incredible Picasso in Palestine project back in 2011. That year, Hourani was finally able to bring a Picasso to Palestine. We may take Picasso’s work for granted in Western capitals, but in places under occupation there is real power in the presence of such “masterpiece” objects since shuttling treasures across borders reveals who is actually in control — the fact is that the Palestinian Authority has very limited authority over its own boundaries.
Speaking to Leah Sandals at Canadian Art magazine, Hourani outlined the serious issues he faced when he brought a Picasso painting to Ramallah, the capital of the Palestinian Authority. “How do you bring an artwork into a war zone? Normally this kind of artwork is supposed to go between two states that have clear borders, and it might normally take five months for that, from a museum to a museum,” Hourani explained. “In our situation, you couldn’t guarantee the safety of the artwork. So that was also an obstacle. It was not possible to insure the work 100%. And it took two years, rather than five months, to get the artwork from Eindhoven to Ramallah.” The institution making the loan, the Van Abbemuseum, had to sign off on many of the strict insurance issues.
But the lack of an “exhibition” when the museum opened became a feature of mainstream media coverage of the institution. That absence, which can be interpreted many ways, was ridiculed by at least one Israeli news source that used the artless halls to hammer home a right-wing talking point: “As such, there is no distinct ‘Palestinian’ history or culture. And, so, it was absolutely fitting that The Palestinian Museum of Art, History and Culture opened its doors with NO EXHIBITS” (emphasis theirs). But on the Israeli left, or what remains of it, newspapers like Haaretz avoided that kind of extremist rhetoric to applaud the reality of this achievement — even pointing out that when Berlin’s Jewish Museum opened in 1999, it did not have a collection.
Yet this Museum is not hindered by its reality and it has decided to source many of its materials and talent from outside Israel, which is clearly a political and conceptual statement. That means the architects (Heneghan Peng) are Dublin-based, the landscape architect (Lara Zureikat) is Jordanian, the exit signs were from Austria (but the Israeli authorities rejected them for import and the builders had to adapt to the bureaucratic hurdle), and all other elements are sourced from elsewhere. It’s hard not to see the very existence of the Palestinian Museum as part of a conceptual project in exploring what is even possible here.
The building itself is a beautiful and stark structure that echoes the taste for minimal elegance in the art world. There is no groundbreaking architecture though, even if the terraced gardens really differentiate the institution from other art venues of this type. Labeled with names that would make a hipster’s head explode with envy — including “Aromatic Garden,” “Medicinal Garden,” and “Olive Garden” (*cue hipsters giggles*) — the gardens are hard to differentiate when on-site because they visually blend into one another, though a veteran gardener may spot these easily.
The garden is also significant because at the foundation of colonialism is the struggle for land. Property and space, particularly public space, are always political, but here they are so much more so considering what people call “Palestine” is more a conceptual space nowadays, rather than a contiguous geography.
The museum’s new exhibition, Jerusalem Lives, is curated by Reem Fadda (with assistant curators Fawz Kabra and Yara Abbas) and features 48 artists, including 18 commissions. While the galleries inside include works by Mona Hatoum, Khaled Hourani, Khaled Jarrar, and other modern and contemporary artists, the outdoor work is a major attraction in its own right.
Emily Jacir’s “Untitled (servees)” uses the voices of ride-sharing taxi drivers calling out their intended destinations from Jerusalem. It plays on loudspeakers in the museum’s parking lot, and from a distance it can even sound like a muezzin’s call to prayer. In a place where transportation is a hassle, particularly for those with identity papers that limit mobility, the call is both absurd and nostalgic, reminding many of a time when a trip from Jerusalem was far less difficult and could even be done in roughly 30 minutes (it’s only 25 miles away).
The specificity of place is also at the core of Athar Jaber’s “Stone – Opus 15” work, which is fashioned from locally sourced limestone. The Iraqi-Dutch artist has crafted a piece that echoes the worn stone of Jerusalem’s religious landmarks by carving and sanding the hulking stone. If Western art history is still enamored with Michelangelo’s romantic ideal of freeing the figure from a block of marble, Jaber points to a more local history where stones are acts of devotion, touched by hands eager to get close to the divine. In contrast to conventional museums, where objects are roped off from visitors, Jaber invites visitors to graffiti and leave their marks on the work — they can even sit in it. It’s a different approach to art that predates our modern museology.
The most powerful work in the Gardens is Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme’s “We know what it is for/we who have used it” (2017), which builds on the artist duo’s research into the use of political narratives. Composed of 3D-printed marble masks and a five-channel sound installation, the work focuses on 13 Neolithic masks that may be the oldest known masks in the world. Removed from the West Bank with mysterious provenance, most are currently held in private collections, though two are in the permanent collection of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where all 13 were brought together for a 2014 exhibition. According to the artist duo, that exhibition instrumentalized the masks as part of Israel’s Zionist ideology.
I left the museum thrilled to see this new art institution participating in the formation of a new and continually evolving Palestinian identity, one formed through a connection to the land. It’s ambitious, but I didn’t realize how much of an impact it could have until I left the next day through Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. When the Israeli border official questioned me about as to why I was in Ramallah, I was frank. “I was there yesterday to see the Palestinian Museum,” I said. “What kind of art do they show there?” he asked. I replied: “International contemporary artists.” He seemed perplexed. He had never heard of the museum and looked at me blankly until I saw his mind slowly form the thought into something more concrete, and it was obviously something that he had never thought of before.
“Wow, I had no idea” he said. “You should check it out,” I replied, in a manner that was probably too friendly for a border interaction. But he didn’t dismiss the idea like other Israelis I had met on this and a previous trip; the typical reaction to my suggestion is a stern, “I’m not allowed to go there as an Israeli.”
That prohibition is only partly true, since no one would check, and many Israelis flaunt the law openly by crossing into lands that on paper appear to be prohibited. But the fact that the border official didn’t fall on that rote answer suggested I had jostled him into imagining something else. I felt the potential of such a museum in that moment.
— Courtesy Hyperallergic
