Indiana University cancels major exhibition of Palestinian artists

The first American retrospective of Samia Halaby, considered one of the most important living Palestinian artists, was abruptly canceled in recent weeks by Indiana University officials.

Dozens of her vibrant and abstract paintings were already at the school when Halaby, 87, said she received a call from the college president. Eskenazi Art Museum. The director told her that employees shared the concerns about this her social media posts about the war between Israel and Gazawhere she had expressed her support for Palestinian causes and her outrage at violence in the Middle East, comparing the Israeli bombardment to a genocide.

Halaby later received a two-sentence note from the museum director, David Brenneman, officially canceling the show in Bloomington, Indiana, without clear explanation.

“I am writing to formally notify you that the Eskenazi Museum of Art will not host the planned exhibition of your work,” Brenneman wrote in the December 20 letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times.

A few months earlier, Brenneman had applauded the artist’s “dynamic and innovative approach to art making” in promotional materials, saying the exhibition would show how universities “value artistic experimentation.”

The show’s cancellation is the latest example of the heavy criticism artists and academics have faced since the war began in October. Magazine editors have been fired, artists have had their work censored, and university presidents have resigned under pressure.

“Obviously my freedom of speech is in question here,” said Halaby, who earned a master’s degree from Indiana University and later taught students there. She said a museum employee raised concerns about her exhibit.

It had taken more than three years to organize the retrospective, which was set to open on February 10, in collaboration with the University of Michigan. Broad Art Museum; Agreements had already been signed with grant funds and museums that loaned works of art to Indiana University from across the country. Halaby also prepared to unveil a new digital artwork for the exhibition, alongside never-before-seen works such as a 1989 painting called “Worldwide Intifadah.”

Steven Bridges, director of the Broad Art Museum, said his institution still plans to host it the exhibition this year.

An Indiana University spokesperson, Mark Bode, said in a statement Wednesday that “academic leaders and campus officials have canceled the exhibit due to concerns about ensuring the integrity of the exhibit for its duration.”

In November, Representative Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter against the university, saying it could lose federal funding if administrators tolerate anti-Semitism on campus. In December, the university a permanent professor of political science has been suspended after the student-led Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which he said organized an unauthorized event.

Halaby became a celebrated artist by combining the approaches of Abstract Expressionism and Russian Constructivism with the social activism of Mexican muralists in the early 20th century.

She described her work as following the traditions of the Palestinian “liberation art‘And remained politically outspoken throughout her career. She made history in 1972 as the first woman to hold the title of associate professor at the Yale School of Art. She was also at the forefront of digital art, teaching herself to write computer programs in the 1980s.

In a review of her work in a 2006 group exhibition on Palestinian artists, New York Times critic Holland Cotter said that one of Halaby’s wall pieces looked “like a cross between a floral bouquet and camouflage material.”

Her paintings now hang in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Art Institute of Chicago, although most of her exhibition history takes place at cultural institutions in Europe and the Middle East. She had that recently a retrospective exhibition with more than 200 works of art at the Sharjah Art Museum in the United Arab Emirates.

“The political situation is extremely tense now, and such an exhibition could have brought people together with the nuance of Samia’s work,” Nadia Radwan, an art historian specializing in Middle Eastern artists, said of the canceled exhibition at the University of Indiana. “She belongs to the Palestinian diaspora, but she is also a very American abstract artist. Her recognition came late in life.”

A online petition The demand that Indiana University reinstate the exhibit has received thousands of signatures. Madison Gordon, the artist’s grandniece and a trustee of her foundation, said in the petition that Halaby’s appeal to university president Pamela Whitten went unanswered.

“The university is canceling the show to distance itself from the cause of Palestinian freedom,” Gordon wrote. “Samia has been an outspoken and principled activist for the dignity, freedom and self-determination of the Palestinian people for fifty years.”

Halaby said she was disappointed by the university’s decision. She grew up in the Midwest and believed that having her first major U.S. retrospective there would center her career.

“I thought I had found something I could call home in Indiana,” the artist said, “and it turned out to be completely untrue.”