Israel Show OR Protest Divides Indian Artists

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Tripti Lahiri

‘Hungry God’ by artist Subodh Gupta.
Gupta is invited to participate in the show in Israel.
(Carl Court/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

ISRAEL - Deconstructing India, a group show of contemporary Indian artists that is being planned for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in May next year, was keeping a pretty low profile. Until, that is, N. Pushpamala, a Bangalore-based artist, sent an e-mail to artists and writers late last month asking them to boycott the show out of solidarity with the Palestinians, as part of a campaign begun in 2004. But the call to boycott the show in a state-funded museum has met with mixed results. “Israel has done terribly by the Palestinians, but associating art institutions and centers of learning, even state-funded ones, so closely with state policy is a silly mistake in my opinion,” wrote Girish Shahane, a writer, in an email response to an artist who forwarded the boycott call. [link]