Exhibiting activism at the Palestinian Museum

Abstract

ABSTRACT The sovereign nation-state remains the taken-for-granted setting for museums, which are conventionally understood as public institutions that collate and preserve objects, and make collections accessible to visitors. Given these expectations, the Palestinian Museum offers an intriguing case study in a growing body of research on the relationship between museums and international relations. In 2016, the Palestinian Museum opened in the West Bank without a collection and with an admission that, due to the Israeli occupation, many Palestinians would not be able to reach the building. This article proposes that the museum initiative and the experiences it has entailed illustrate activism under occupation, and the challenge this activism makes to Israel’s policies of control and erasure has been visible in three key ways. Firstly, the museum asserts a visible national presence in an environment where the everyday lives of Palestinians and Palestinian ambitions for independence are severely constrained. Secondly, the museum staff have used the lack of a collection to draw international attention to the Israeli occupation and policies of settlement, expropriation, and control. And thirdly, in its programme and stated ambitions, the museum’s designers have given wide scope to their imagined audience and the Palestinian national community, with a view to enhancing a transnational arena for activism.