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CIMAM Criticizes Censorship of Pro-Palestinian Voices
By Anna Lentchner
TAYSIR BATNIJI, Untitled, 2014, glass key ring, dimensions variable. Courtesy the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art.
On January 15, the Museum Watch committee, a branch of the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM), released a statement announcing it was “following with concern” the “unprecedented international censorship of artists and curators who have expressed their political views and support for the Palestinian people.”
The statement establishes a pattern of Western institutions silencing members of the arts community, often over content they have shared on social media. Explicitly named examples are the cancellation of Berlin-based curator Anaïs Duplan’s exhibition “Afrofuturism” in November 2023, at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany, and Jewish-South African artist Candice Breitz’s 2024 solo show in Saarbrücken, Germany, as well as Palestinian artists Jumana Manna’s panel discussion at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio, and Samia Halaby’s major retrospective at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at her alma matter, Indiana University Bloomington.
“There are a few cases of museums and institutions that have defended free expression,” the Museum Watch committee conceded, citing Kunsthalle Basel’s recent hiring of Mohamed Almusibli as its director despite a local newspaper pointing out that Almusibli recently signed two open letters in support of Palestine. “In this time of conflict and crisis, CIMAM would like to stress the importance of preserving the museum as a space for the free artistic expression. It is more urgent than ever that the diversity of artistic voices is guaranteed and that artistic positions from situations in crisis get more space, not less.”
Representing the committee, the message was undersigned by seven prominent figures in the global arts community, including Bart De Baere, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp, Belgium; Zeina Arida, director of the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha; Amanda de la Garza, director of Mexico’s University Museum of Contemporary Art; Victoria Noorthoorn, director of the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art; Madrid-based curator Agustin Perez Rubio; Toronto-based independent curator Kitty Scott; Malgorzata Ludwisiak, artistic director of Poland’s Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; and Yu Jin Seng, deputy director of the National Gallery Singapore.
CIMAM is a nonprofit organization that connects international museums focused on modern and contemporary art, and is affiliated with the Paris-based International Council of Museums (ICOM), an NGO with a mission to uphold museums’ ethical and professional standards. On October 23, 2023, dozens of major Israeli institutions submitted a letter to the council entitled “Urgent: Appeal for a Strong Stance by ICOM on Recent Events in Israel,” demanding it condemn Hamas’s deadly October 7 attacks. No such condemnation was released. Instead, on October 25, ICOM published a statement urging against the destruction of cultural property in Gaza and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
Anna Lentchner is assistant editor at ArtAsiaPacific.
