The U.S. Art World's Complicity in Palestinian Invisibility Must End
The Watermelon, acrylic on canvas, by Beesan Arafat.
The U.S. arts establishment and leaders immediately expressed grief, condemnation, and solidarity with Israel following October 7th. Since then, the death toll of Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza officially stands at 62,000 but is estimated to have surpassed 100,000. The remaining population struggles to survive a humanitarian catastrophe due to Israel’s genocidal military siege and near-total blockade on any provisions supportive of life in Gaza. On July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice gave an advisory opinion defining Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as unlawful and needing to come to an end “as rapidly as possible.” The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli government officials including Benjamin Netanyahu.
During this period, U.S. arts institutions and leaders have, for the most part, remained silent.
In contrast, artists and cultural workers traditionally aligned with social justice movements and revolutionary positions have used the word "genocide" to describe the past sixteen months. Workers across sectors of the arts and entertainment world have been creating protest art, forming coalitions, marching, signing open letters, and posting online to demand: a ceasefire, an end to the occupation, an end to weapon sales for Israel, and an end to the silence from arts leaders and institutions.
Words and actions regarding Palestine and Israel have exposed significant divisions in the cultural world and raised questions about Zionism’s censorious influence in the arts. There has always been a fundamental disconnect between art workers and the wealthy interests supporting the arts on political or social issues.
History of Radical Tradition
Mired by its Eurocentric origins, the U.S. art establishment struggles to evolve from an overrepresentation of white affluent artists, curators, dealers, donors, and boards. Despite the increase in socially driven mission statements and tokenized diversity, the historically exclusive spaces and support networks of the art world remain mostly out of reach for poor and marginalized artists. This reality means the art world lacks perspective when it comes to aligning modern institutions with abolitionist, decolonial cultural and social movements.
United States of Attica print (1971) by Faith Ringgold.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, Black artists broadened the parameters of American art to speak to the needs and aspirations of Black people. Over the decades, more direct political declarations about resisting racism, the police, and colonialism, and advancing Pan-African self-determination emerged. Black artists were responding to the profusion of racist violence and discrimination that continues to kill the global Black community. The mainstream art world refused to be at the forefront of this movement.
Dissatisfied with the institutional unwillingness to cede leadership roles to Black people and the lack of representation of Black artists in mainstream collections and exhibitions, artists responded to institutional invisibility by organizing their own galleries and art collectives. Artists like Faith Ringgold, Vivien E. Browne, Cecil Ferguson, Emory Douglass, and groups like the Black Arts Council, Where We At Black Women Artists, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, and Just Above Midtown used art to advance Black power, Black feminism, and radical change to the art world status quo.
Palestinians are facing the same invisibility that Black artists face, and it might be even harder to break through. This is one of many things that link the two struggles. The Black radical tradition has always aligned itself with Palestinian liberation, seeing the struggles as joint efforts to resist white supremacy and colonialism. Palestinians have used art to resist erasure and express their existence, resilience, and longing for their stolen land, as well as solidarity with Black Americans struggling against police brutality.
Under the Olive Tree (2023) by Kalaka.
More than ever, there is an extreme taboo in the U.S. around exhibiting Palestinian cultural work. The same museums and galleries that welcomed dialogue around decolonizing the art world, exhibitions and collections of radical Black artwork, or exhibitions of protest art have refrained from supporting programming centering on contemporary Palestinian cultural production. Apart from the silence is the blacklisting and censorship of pro-Palestinian artists that has affected every sector of the arts and entertainment industries.
To understand the glaring contradictions present in the art world, we first have to understand the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC):
Owning-class, wealthy, and often white donors are overrepresented in the arts as patrons and donors.
Organizations rely on the state and philanthropy of wealthy people for financial stability.
This dependency often blunts or entirely neutralizes principled movement building within art spaces to satisfy donors, foundations, and grant mandates.
Zionism colludes with NPIC to create a system of strings-attached funding, making it hard to criticize Israel without being condemned for antisemitism and risking the loss of critical funding.
The Zionist Influence in the Arts
Marvel Comic’s Israeli superheroine and mutant Mossad agent, Sabra, first debuted in The Incredible Hulk #250 in 1980.
The arts are a key battleground for Zionist influence across the world. For decades, the Israeli government has sought to communicate with citizens of other countries to build cultural relations. This form of cultural diplomacy, or "soft power," was important to bolster Israel’s global standing and garner support for the government’s strategic aims of creating a Zionist ethnostate. Coined by Harvard political scientist Joseph Nye in 1990, the concept of soft power distinguished itself from the "hard" power of military and economic levers to identify the way governments shape preferences through culture, ideology, and institutions. This can be further understood in the global deployment of the American Dream and worldview through Hollywood fiction and pop culture.
For Israel, its nation-branding has involved facilitating intra-country academic and cultural exchanges and partnerships, mass communication through media and social media, and various pro-Israel civil society organizations and initiatives. Entire generations of people in the U.S. have been influenced through culture and media to see Israel as a cosmopolitan society, a key ally, and a beacon of liberal democracy in the ‘hostile’ Middle East. The arts were especially targeted to counter the sector’s proneness towards anti-Zionism.
The result is a deeply embedded pro-Israel influence on the U.S. public and cultural economy that can be traced to the highest levels of the U.S. arts establishment. Institutions that shape the direction, funding, and visibility of the arts in the U.S.– advisory and leadership boards, trustees, directors, curators, art dealers, governmental and federal agencies, foundations, philanthropic organizations, museums, art galleries, auction houses, art schools, universities, arts councils, arts advocacy groups, arts festivals, and art publications– have been shaped by Zionist influence for generations.
As such, anything that can be construed as a pro-Palestinian position is advised against and avoided, often under the pretenses of "neutrality" or "fear" of inciting antisemitism. A rebuke of Israel’s illegal occupation can and has resulted in censored work and loss of crucial funding, investments, and career opportunities for organizations and artists. However, less controversial anti-racism, feminist, and decolonial stances are allowed– even if begrudgingly.
The National Coalition Against Censorship released an “Art Censorship Index” after October 7th to track and map instances of alleged pro-Israel and pro-Palestine censorship in the U.S. art world. Of the 28 entries, 24 incidents detailed pro-Palestine censorship including canceled exhibitions, revoked residencies, and axed editorials.
Here is a glimpse at the censorship of Palestinian perspectives in Western culture since October 7th:
In April 2024, The Den Coffeehouse - owned by renowned D.C. bookstore Politics and Prose - hosted 19 artworks celebrating Arab-American Heritage Month and censored artwork depicting watermelons in the shape of Israel, removing them from an exhibition within hours after it opened.
David Velasco, the editor-in-chief of Artforum, was fired for publishing an open letter on the magazine’s website signed by hundreds of members of the arts community, which called for an immediate ceasefire.
Indiana University canceled a major exhibition of Palestinian artist, Samia Halaby, who was outspoken about the genocide.
In the literary world, sponsors withdrew from the National Book Awards ceremony in November 2023 after learning that authors were planning to call for a ceasefire.
In the U.K., after backlash against various ACE-funded organizations for their pro-Palestine stances, The Arts Council England (ACE) warned affiliated organizations about the reputational risks of “overtly political or activist statements” made by individuals associated with them and advised that statements deemed too controversial could jeopardize funding.
Business and art world elite reportedly tried to influence NYC Mayor Eric Adams to deploy the NYPD to violently crack down on student protesters at Columbia.
Here are pre-October 7th cases of anti-Palestinian censorship:
In 2011, the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in Oakland, CA canceled a planned exhibit of artwork by Palestinian children. The artwork depicted children’s perspectives on the Israeli assault during the 2008-09 Gaza conflict.
In 2004, the Ford Foundation, which generously supported the public programming of Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power from 2017-2020, also pulled funding from INCITE! for their statement of support for Palestinian liberation.
Israel has banned the flag and color palette of Palestine for decades, arresting artists, criminalizing, and destroying paintings of watermelons or poppy plants that feature the signature red, white, green, and black.
We Must Reject Zionism in the Art World
Cultural diplomacy with Israel and the fear of antisemitism have created an atmosphere of political correctness that justifies the Israeli occupation while punishing the moral critique of Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. This has resulted in a turbulent balancing act for museums, galleries, studios, and other centers of the arts who are weighing their engagement with artists’ activist stances with out-of-touch, old-money, typically Zionist funders.
In an interview with Hyperallergic, Laura Raicovich, author of Culture Strike: Art and Museums in the Age of Protest and former director at the Queens Museum, talked about the need to transcend the balancing act: “I know that you sometimes walk a thin line between biting the proverbial hand that feeds and speaking truth to power in ways that are really essential and important. However, the museum is a reflection of who we are as a culture — the good, the bad, and the ugly. That, in a way, makes it about as interesting and perhaps fruitful a place as any to experiment with how to make change.”
Free Palestine, Gerard Dalbon
Cultural spaces matter because of their ability to be a public commons for art and activism. Even with enduring colonial traits and ongoing parameters within the NPIC, the U.S. arts establishment exists to serve the public and endear itself to arts workers. As such, artists, patrons, and staff have a right to question the status quo and demand change as key stakeholders and laborers.
Culture is not just about aesthetics, but our values as a society. Cultural leaders have a moral duty to decolonize their institutions, contribute their spaces and resources to solidarity work, and evolve from faux-progressivism to boldly reject all forms of exclusion in the arts. Cultural diplomacy with Israel must end. The cowardice and fear of criticizing Israel’s settler-colonial project must end. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), launched by the BDS campaign, provides clear principles for the cultural boycott of Israel.
The divide between institutions and workers is becoming more difficult to ignore each day as the genocide continues and mechanisms of international law reach conclusions declaring crimes against humanity. So long as wealthy Zionists remain an acceptable influence in our cultural spaces, the U.S. art world will continue to be complicit in Palestinian invisibility.
