The first American retrospective of Samia Halaby, considered one of the most important living Palestinian artists, was abruptly canceled by Indiana University officials in recent weeks.
Dozens of his vibrant, abstract paintings were already at the school when Halaby, 87, said he received a call from the college principal. Eskenazi Art Museum. The manager informed him that the employees had shared their concern about his social media posts about the war between Israel and Gazawhere he expressed his support for Palestinian causes and his outrage at violence in the Middle East, comparing Israeli bombings to genocide.
Halaby later received a two-sentence note from the museum’s director, David Brenneman, officially canceling the exhibition in Bloomington, Indiana, without a clear explanation.
“I am writing to formally notify you that the Eskenazi Art Museum will not host a planned exhibition of your work,” Brenneman wrote in the Dec. 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 artistic creation” in promotional materials, where he said the exhibition would demonstrate how universities “value artistic experimentation.”
The show’s cancellation is the latest example of the intense scrutiny that 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.
“It is clearly my freedom of speech that is in question here,” said Halaby, who earned a master’s degree at Indiana University and later taught students there. He said a museum employee had raised concerns about his exhibit.
The retrospective, which was to open on February 10, took more than three years to organize in collaboration with Michigan State University. Broad Art Museum; Agreements have already been signed with foundations that make grants and museums that loaned artwork to Indiana University from around the country. Halaby was also preparing to present a new digital artwork for the exhibition, as well as never-before-seen works, such as a 1989 painting called “World Intifada.”
Steven Bridges, director of the Broad Art Museum, said his institution was still planning to host The exhibition this year.
An Indiana University spokesman, Mark Bode, said in a statement Wednesday that “academic leaders and campus officials canceled the exhibit due to concerns about ensuring the integrity of the exhibit throughout its duration.”
In November, Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter to the university saying it could lose federal funding if administrators tolerated anti-Semitism on campus. In December, the university Suspended a tenured professor of political science after the student-led Palestinian Solidarity Committee, which he advises, organized an unauthorized event.
Halaby became a famous artist combining the approaches of abstract expressionism and Russian constructivism with the social activism of the Mexican muralists of the early 20th century.
She described her work as following Palestinian traditions “liberation art”And she 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.
Reviewing her work in a 2006 group exhibition of 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.”
His paintings are now 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 his exhibition history takes place in cultural institutions in Europe and the Middle East. . she recently had a retrospective with more than 200 works of art at the Sharjah Art Museum in the United Arab Emirates.
“The current political situation is extremely tense and such an exhibition could have brought people together with the nuances 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 is from the Palestinian diaspora, but she is also a very American abstract artist. The recognition of her 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 great-niece and a trustee of her foundation, said in the petition that Halaby’s appeals to university President Pamela Whitten went unanswered.
“The university is canceling the show to distance itself from the cause of Palestinian freedom,” Gordon wrote. “For 50 years, Samia has been an outspoken and principled activist for the dignity, freedom and self-determination of the Palestinian people.”
Halaby said she was disappointed by the university’s decision. She grew up in the Midwest and believed that having the first major American retrospective of hers there would bring her career full circle.
“I thought I had found something I could call my home in Indiana,” the artist said, “and it turned out to be totally false.”
