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Victoria Advocate · Victoria, Texas · 19 May 2016

CP-2016-003

New Palestinian museum missing one thing: All the exhibits

Debut shows ‘we are still here,’ Abbas says

Shira Rubin, Special for USA Today, Birzeit

New Palestinian museum missing one thing: All the exhibits — Victoria Advocate, 19 May 2016
Victoria Advocate · Victoria, Texas · 19 May 2016

Transcribed from the clipping

“BIRZEIT, WEST BANK — A $24 million Palestinian Museum of Art, History and Culture that opened Wednesday showcases a beautiful building with sweeping views. All that’s missing are the exhibits. It’s an unfortunate metaphor for a people long in search of a national identity and homeland. Still, Palestinians went ahead with a festive celebration marking the empty museum’s debut to ‘tell the world, the entire world, that we are here, that we are still here, and we will continue to be here to build our independent state,’ Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said. ‘We have been planted here since the dawn of history,’ Abbas said. The 43,000-square-foot space was designed by the Dublin-based architectural firm Heneghan Peng in the style of the terraced hills of the West Bank. It has been hailed by Palestinian leaders as a beacon of optimism in a territory under Israeli occupation. Completion of the exhibits has been delayed, in part because the museum’s director resigned last December over disagreements with the museum’s management. With him went the first exhibit, ‘Never Part,’ which showcased personal items of Palestinian refugees to showcase their heritage. Museum Chairman Omar Qattan said that after years of postponements, the decision was made to go ahead with the opening ‘for something affirmative in the midst of all this negative energy.’ ‘It will be even more special when we launch our programs later this year,’ he said. The opening was timed to coincide with the week in which Palestinians mark the 68th anniversary of the nakba, ‘catastrophe’ in Arabic, a reference to the creation of Israel in 1948, which led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.”

Photograph caption

“The Palestinian Museum has been hailed by Palestinian leaders as a symbol of optimism.” · Shira Rubin, Special for USA Today

Context added by this archive

A museum of Palestinian art and history opens with nothing in it, and the reporter reaches for the metaphor in the third paragraph. The exhibit that was to have filled it was called Never Part and consisted of the personal belongings of refugees; it left with the director who resigned. The opening was timed for the week of the sixty-eighth anniversary of the nakba. Birzeit is the same town whose university president this archive holds being deported in 1976 and whose professors are quoted in a Miami Herald feature in 1977.

Cite this item

"New Palestinian museum missing one thing: All the exhibits," Victoria Advocate, 19 May 2016. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2016-003. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2016-003

Elsewhere in the archive

This record is part of Covering Palestine, an archive of American and Anglophone newspaper clippings about Palestinians, 1812 to 2022. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles.

The clipping belongs to the newspaper that printed it, or to the wire service that supplied the copy. It is reproduced here for research, criticism and commentary. The city is derived from the masthead, not read off the clipping.

Something wrong here, or something you know about this clipping? The archive is still being built and corrections are wanted: maria@rozumstudio.com, quoting CP-2016-003.

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