Palestinian Artwork at Brandeis By EMILY GOGOLAK

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1 October 12, 2012 Palestinian Artwork at Brandeis By EMILY GOGOLAK WALTHAM, Mass. It s been a tough few years for art at Brandeis University. Its Rose museum has been struggling to recover from a near-death experience since it tried to sell its distinguished collection in 2009 to fill a financial hole punched by the recession and the Bernard Madoff scandal. But if the Rose Art Museum nearly fell off the map, it has now taken a step meant to make the art world take notice. Its first exhibition since 2008 from outside the museum s collection has now opened, featuring an artist from Jerusalem whose work is critical of Israel. The artist, Dor Guez, 30, is the son of a Palestinian Christian and a Tunisian-born Jew, and his polemical work largely centers on narrating the experiences of the Arab citizens of Israel, including the way their presence in Israel after the Jewish state was established formed an interference in the Zionist master plan. At the Istanbul Biennial last year he presented Scanograms #2, September 2011, an installation that challenged Israel to support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations. Presenting Palestinian passports from before 1948, accompanied by testimonies in Arabic, it has since been shown in Israel. When Mr. Guez s work is offered in Israel, it routinely elicits heated responses. At an exhibition last year at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, for example, visitor comments included Go to your friends in Gaza, and Traitor! Brandeis is the nation s only nonsectarian Jewish university, and there is scant sympathy on campus for the Palestinian cause, students say. Museum and university officials say that they are not afraid of controversy, having grown accustomed to it during the battle over their thwarted plan to close the Rose. We know what we do now will attract lots of attention, said Christopher Be director of the museum. We want to capitalize on that attention. Gannit Ankori, a professor of art history at Brandeis and a curator of the Gue Steps to the Mediterranean, said Mr. Guez was chosen for the opening exhibi MORE IN AR Arts C of Souv Ship dford, the new z show, 100 Read More tion because of 1/4

2 the exquisite quality of his work, and also because he s challenging. Brandeis has described the exhibition as an exploration of the overlooked histories of the Christian Palestinian minority in the Middle East, though Mr. Guez s work also delves into the experience of Muslim Palestinians. Savvy students have noticed differences between the Guez pieces shown at Brandeis and more strident work of various Palestinian artists that is sometimes displayed in Israel and elsewhere. I do wonder if this was in some sense the safer route to take, said Alia Goldfarb, a Brandeis senior. Rida Abu Rass, a junior from Jaffa who said he was the only Palestinian undergraduate student at the university, agreed. It s convenient for Brandeis, because the exhibition is not as out there as it could have been, he said. So it is not as hard for public relations. Nonetheless, 100 Steps to the Mediterranean, which opened on Sept. 20 and runs through Dec. 9, is hard on Israeli Jews. A video playing on a large screen spanning the back wall of the exhibition is the show s focal point. A rolling image of Jaffa s beachfront fills the screen, while a voice asks: Why did the people flee? They were afraid the Jews would do something to them. In another piece a college-age relative of the artist speaks to the camera as if it were the screen of a confession booth. I grew up with all the songs that any other girl, say Jewish, grows up with, she says. Sometimes it s really scary to speak Arabic next to all kinds of people, because I m scared they ll literally beat me up. Noam Lekach, a junior from Israel who leads Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus organization that says on its Web site that it wants to give a voice to those who are interested in promoting the Palestinian perspective, said it is hard to get other Brandeis students to pay attention to that point of view. My experience in trying to bring the Palestinian narrative to campus is that people are really resistant to hear about it, he said They either ignore it or dismiss it as being anti-semitic or against the existence of Israel. A leader of a pro-israel student group also said he has had little dialogue with ideological rivals. I ve never had any formal interaction with Students for Justice in Palestine, said Joshua Kaye, an organizer for the Brandeis Israel Political Action Committee. They ve never 2/4

3 talked with us and we ve never talked with them, even socially. So it is perhaps surprising that responses to Mr. Guez s exhibition have been mild. You would expect very negative reactions at Brandeis, Mr. Lekach said. But all of the people I have talked about it with really enjoyed it. Maybe because the show is not too out there, people are willing to discuss it and take it more seriously. Members of the university s pro-israel camp are also visiting the exhibition. I m sure that a lot of people might disagree with the content, but I m also sure that people think it s very thought-provoking, Mr. Kaye said. We are still very much figuring out how to talk about these issues. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: October 17, 2012 An article on Saturday about an exhibition at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University featuring the work of Dor Guez, an artist from Jerusalem whose work is critical of Israel, misstated the history of the exhibition of his installation Scanograms #2, September That work, which challenged Israel to support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations, has in fact been shown in Israel. (It is not in the exhibition at the Rose.) This article has been revised to reflect the following correction: Correction: October 20, 2012 An article on Oct. 13 about an exhibition at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University of works by Dor Guez, an artist from Jerusalem whose work is critical of Israel, included a number of errors and misquotations. Visitors who left comments at a 2011 exhibition of Mr. Guez s work in Tel Aviv wrote, Traitor! Go show it in Gaza, and Go to your friends in Gaza not You re a terrorist or Go back to Gaza. The artist did not say in a 2011 interview that his work sought to deconstruct the Zionist master plan ; in an exchange, he wrote that the existence of Muslim and Palestinian minorities in the Jewish state formed an interference in the Zionist master plan. Brandeis students who were quoted in the article commenting that Mr. Guez s work shown at Brandeis seemed less overtly political than art displayed in Israel were referring to exhibitions in Israel by various Palestinian artists, not to Mr. Guez s shows there. While publicity materials about Mr. Guez s Rose exhibition described his work as focusing on Christian Palestinians, they did not label 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: Fax: ,info@dvirgallery.com, 3/4

4 him a Christian Palestinian. Contrary to the article s assertion, the university s news director says museum and university officials do not acknowledge that there is scant sympathy on campus for the Palestinian cause. And Professor Gannit Ankori is a curator of the Guez exhibition, not a staff curator at the Rose. 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: Fax: , info@dvirgallery.com,

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