It’s very good news that Wichita State University and the Mid-Kansas Jewish Federation came to their senses and are allowing Ms. Jacir’s exhibition to continue with no strings attached.

According to the MKJF their excuse is — basically — that they’re clueless. Judith Press, Executive Director of MKJF,

We made a request to the University, and we are under the impression at this point that this was not an appropriate request […] We did not realize that this was considered inappropriate or infringing on the artist’s rights. We need to not ask for that if it is not appropriate.

The University should have known it was inappropriate, and if not, they should have consulted with the professionals running the museum in order to determine the appropriateness of the “request” from the MKJF. But according to a commenter on NEWSgrist posting under the name Debbie Gordon (with a wichita.edu email address), “the lead donor in a major building project on campus. Someone the news got to her about the exhibit, and she threatened to pull her donation.” So we see what sort of “request” this was — one that is very hard to refuse.

What is somewhat bizarre to me regarding this whole affair is that there are plenty of ways to encourage dialogue around the exhibition which would have been sensitive to everyone’s needs and expectations. Public panels, symposia, gallery talks and etc probably would have been acceptable to the artist, but the University simply took some ham-handed approach to the situation and compounded the stupidity with lack of communication between all involved.

It’s important to remember that the outcry against the MKJF’s “request” to place brochures and signage outside the gallery wasn’t an outcry against dialogue in the white box of the contemporary museum gallery. It was an outcry against springing a forced dialogue on a particular artist that would have pitted Jacir’s aesthetics against the MKJF’s polemics and propaganda without consulting with the artist.

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In response to these posts on NEWSgrist:
Art Intolerance, Part 3: Jacir Exhibition Moves Forward
Art Intolerance, Part 2: Emily Jacir/Ulrich
Arts Intolerance: Emily Jacir/Ulrich Museum, Wichita permanent link to this post