JTA | JEWISH NEWS SOURCE
PENNSYLVANIA---An art exhibition in Pittsburgh featuring the work of Israeli, Palestinian and American artists
was canceled after the Palestinian artists withdrew from the show. “Sites of Passage: Borders, Walls & Citizenship,” scheduled to run at Pittsburgh’s Mattress Factory museum from June 1 to July 27, was the culmination of a joint multimedia project begun a year ago by the artists, the Jewish Chronicle reported. The Palestinian artists pulled out of the show on May 29, a day after the Israeli artists had canceled their participation in order to allow the Palestinians to continue participating and to protect them from threats and criticism on an Arabic-language Facebook page, Tavia La Follette, the independent curator of the exhibit, told the newspaper. [
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“Sites of Passage: Borders, Walls & Citizenship,” scheduled to run at the Mattress Factory museum on Pittsburgh’s North Side from June 1 to July 27 — with a corresponding exhibit scheduled to run at Filmmakers Galleries in Oakland from June 6 to Aug. 1 — was the culmination of a joint multimedia project begun a year ago and featuring the work of three Israeli, three Palestinian and five American artists.
It was canceled on May 29 after the Palestinian artists withdrew from the show.
The Israeli artists had pulled out of the show one day earlier in order to protect the Palestinians who had been threatened and accused on an Arabic-language Facebook page of “normalizing relations with Israel,” according to Tavia La Follette, the independent curator of the exhibit. La Follette is the founder and director of ArtUp, and an artist-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab.
The trigger for the threats, said La Follete, was the use of the words “collaboration” and “dialogue” within the exhibition’s announcements on the websites of the Mattress Factory and Filmmakers Galleries. But those words were never approved by La Follette or the artists in the exhibition, she said.
According to the museum, the exhibit was canceled because the three Palestinian artists — Bashar Alhroub, Manal Mahamid and Mohammed Mussalam — withdrew their participation.
A statement on the museum's website also read, "The Mattress Factory and guest curator Tavia La Follette would like to make a public apology to all Palestinians everywhere for the misunderstanding of this exhibition."
But the circumstances surrounding the cancellation — and the precise nature of the "misunderstanding" — remain unclear.