Oakland Museum Shuts Down Palestinian Children's Art Exhibit
BERKELEY, CA - September 9 - The Museum of Children's Art in Oakland (MOCHA) has decided to cancel an exhibit of art by Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip. The Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), which was partnering with MOCHA to present the exhibit, was informed of the decision by the Museum's board president on Thursday, September 8, 2011. For several months, MECA and the museum had been working together on the exhibit, which is titled "A Child's View of Gaza."
MECA has learned that there was a concerted effort by pro-Israel organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area to pressure the museum to reverse its decision to display Palestinian children's art.
Barbara Lubin, the Executive Director of MECA, expressed her dismay that the museum decided to censor this exhibit in contradiction of its mission "to ensure that the arts are a fundamental part of the lives of all children."
"We understand all too well the enormous pressure that the museum came under. But who wins? The museum doesn't win. MECA doesn't win. The people of the Bay Area don't win. Our basic constitutional freedom of speech loses. The children in Gaza lose," she said.
"The only winners here are those who spend millions of dollars censoring any criticism of Israel and silencing the voices of children who live every day under military siege and occupation."
Unfortunately, this disturbing incident is just one example of many across the nation in which certain groups have successfully silenced the Palestinian perspective, which includes artistic expression. In fact, some organizations have even earmarked funds for precisely these efforts. Last year, regrettably the Jewish Federation of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched a $6 million initiative to effectively silence Palestinian voices even in "cultural institutions."
The free exhibit, co-sponsored by nearly twenty local organizations, was scheduled to open on September 24, and featured special activities for children and families, including a cartooning workshop and poetry readings.
The Gaza Strip, which has a population of 1.6 million, has been under siege since Israel imposed a blockade against it in 2006. The United Nations and many human rights organizations across the world have condemned the blockade as an inhumane and cruel form of collective punishment.
"Even while the children in Gaza are living under Israeli policies that deprive them of every basic necessity, they managed through art, to express their realities and hopes. It's really very sad that there are people in the U.S. silencing them and shredding their dreams," said Ziad Abbas, MECA's Associate Director.
MECA is disappointed in the museum's decision to deny Bay Area residents the opportunity to view Palestinian children's art, and is committed to seeking an alternative venue.
"We made a promise to the children that their art will be shown and we are going to keep that promise," said Lubin.
Founded in 1988 by Barbara Lubin and Howard Levine, the Middle East Children's Alliance is a Berkeley-based non-profit humanitarian aid organization that has delivered more than $10 million in food, medicine and medical supplies to children in the West Bank and Gaza, Iraq and Lebanon. MECA also provides financial assistance to community groups working with children in the Palestine/Israel.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
Sad but unsurprising. I've seen similar exhibitions closed down here. It is always a concerted effort by a local vocal Israeli/Jewish group that gets them closed. In my opinion there has never been any legitimate reason for doing so in that the exhibition matter was informative, truthful, artistic, nothing offensive except for those that find the reality of Israeli occupation offensive and don't wish others to know of it.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Disgusting! And I sadly say that as a secular Jew firmly opposed to Zionism and the War Crimes and Genocide Israel has long subjected the Palestinian People to. If you have not yet - DO see the excellent British TV production of 'The Promise' - it is a docu-fiction story about the history of the area and just excellent. I watched it several times and cried through it each time in parts. Just brilliant. Never shown in the USA, I believe and had a hard time being shown in the U.K. It was condemned officially by the Israeli government as something that could have been produced by Hamas. It truthfully portrays the history and brilliantly blends the past and the present. A must see movie about the situation - past and present!
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
I was injured as a child; my brother shot me in the eye with a pellet gun, causing disfigurement and loss of sight. The incident itself, as well as the trauma surrounding it: my father was unable to flag down a white driver (cars among black people were rare) to take me to a doctor, left me despairing and contributed to severe depressions that lasted for many years. What helped? I was able to get my hands on paper and pencil and began to write not about what had happened to me but about whatever arose from my melancholy, death-leaning imagination. These early "poems" I was encouraged to share; so I showed them, albeit with head hanging low, to members of my family and to anyone I trusted who came to visit. I am convinced this process of creating and sharing saved my life.
There was no museum in the tiny, segregated, Georgia town closest to where we lived; though I could be wrong. I was fifty before I understood there was, somewhere hidden in the white part of town, a public library. I do remember that the art of Jimmy Lee Brundidge, a young black folk artist, was shown on the walls of the local shoe shop.
The decision by the Museum of Children's Art in Oakland not to show the work of Palestinian children from Gaza makes me sad. But not discouraged. The art will be shown. The walls of a shoe shop will be found. We will all those of us who care about these children, whose pain our tax dollars assured go to see it. Furthermore, we will write to the children to let them know we've seen their work and what we think of it. This is the least we can do.
Such banning as this usually backfires. I don't think I was born yet, but I "remember" that, in 1939, Marian Anderson, the great black contralto, was refused venue at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. by the Daughters of the American Revolution because (gasp) the audience would be integrated! Anderson supporters, including president Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt, rallied to the cause and Anderson sang to a crowd in the tens of thousands while standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
We will find a Lincoln Memorial. We will eventually, on this issue of freeing the Palestinians, find a Lincoln.
I personally have never trusted museums. And I welcome this opportunity to explain what my classmates at Sarah Lawrence considered a really peculiar mind-set. It is because museums, broadly speaking, live off of the art and artifacts of others, often art and artifacts that have been obtained by dubious means. But they also manipulate whatever it is they present to the public: hence, until Judy Chicago, in the 1970s, busted open the art scene wider than it had ever stretched, few women artists were hung in any major museum. Indian artists? Artifacts only, please. Black artists? Something musical, maybe? And so forth.
Do we really need them? Or should we make more of an attempt to teach our young that art is everywhere around them: that every leaf and pebble is art? Or, that the spirit that infuses so much folk art, spirit not often encountered in "museum quality pieces" of art, is that expression of the soul that joins human creative endeavor with the Divine.
Ah, well.
I was in Gaza a few weeks after the 22 days of non-stop bombing by the Israeli military. I spent an afternoon with several social workers and psychiatrists talking about the damage done to the children who survived. Hundreds of them died. I realize it's hard for grownups to accept that we've had a hand in making a small child armless, legless, eyeless. We want to keep thinking Americans are generous, fun-loving, baseball crazed folks who draw the line, collectively, at child abuse. At child murder.
That image was never true, and it certainly isn't now, if we dare to acknowledge our complicity in the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and, of course, the on-going destruction of Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank.
What will help us, now that we find ourselves standing, with Marian Anderson and countless others, in this unfair place. Again.
Each child who sees the art should be given some background about war. Any war. For it is war that humanity must outgrow, wherever it arises. Most modern children have seen on television more tanks and helicopters and missiles and guns of all kinds than I could have imagined as a child. And, in fact, as a child I never had any war images in my imagination at all, since we had no television and the Civil War had ended over a century before. (I did, unfortunately, because of movies, have images of cowboys and Indians).
I love the Bay Area for the diversity and creativity of its people. We frequently exhibit an energy of inclusivity and sharing that is a delight. We can educate and increase the capacity for compassion among our children with this Art. We can make something magical, even of the present disappointing dilemma. We can encourage ourselves, and our children, never to be afraid to feel. No one dies from compassion, is a mantra they might like.
Empathy is a wave that need never be stopped. If our children can catch this wave, from the ocean of tears shed by Palestinian children, they might have a future in a more stable and saner world.
14-09-2011, 06:34 AM (This post was last modified: 14-09-2011, 07:17 AM by Peter Lemkin.)
Magda Hassan Wrote:Is it available on line Peter? Sounds great. I assume it is about Balfour's promise and McMahon's conflicting promises.
I can't find it as streaming video...but that doesn't mean it isn't. I was able to download it under The Promise 2011 from some 'bay'. It is really one of the best films on the subject ever.....fair, balanced, emotional, well-acted, poignant. It brilliantly jumps back and forward in time. It covers well all of the history truthfully and all of the struggle, death, war, lies, promises by politicians. The 'Promise' in the story is a private promise by one British soldier there just after WW II - and the fulfillment of his promise by his granddaughter. When this long delayed and denied 'promise' is finally fulfilled, I can't imagine not shedding many a tear...my eyes are filling now, just remembering it. A brilliant story that tells the story of the region's sad history. Send a copy to any Zionist you know. It could change their heart and mind - that powerful! Total length about 6 hours. http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=we...DILzAE-ZIA
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
Magda Hassan Wrote:Thanks Peter. I found it the other day. I've down loaded it but haven't watched it yet. Looks great. I hope I get a chance this weekend.
Be prepared for a great film in four parts!!!! Whoever wrote the story was brilliant, as is the cinematography and directing. One Israeli review said of the film 'could have been written by Hamas'. I think, however, it is very fair and balanced....showing all sides' pluses and minuses, as actually happened in history. Let me know what you think after you see it. :mexican:
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws. - Mayer Rothschild
"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience! People are obedient in the face of poverty, starvation, stupidity, war, and cruelty. Our problem is that grand thieves are running the country. That's our problem!" - Howard Zinn
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will" - Frederick Douglass
