[Peace-discuss] Chicago Museum Closes Contentious Exhibit

[David Green]

Chicago Museum Closes Contentious Exhibit

By Rebecca Spence
Thu. Jun 26, 2008

In the wake of an outcry from Chicago-area Jews, the Windy City’s 
only Jewish museum closed down a high-profile maps exhibition that 
parsed the issue of Israel’s borders and boundaries.

The Spertus Museum, part of the 84-year-old Spertus Institute of 
Jewish Studies, located on Chicago’s South Loop, announced June 20 
that it was shutting down Imaginary Coordinates, which was originally 
scheduled to close in the fall. The institute’s board of trustees 
came to the decision after nearly two months of vocal opposition from 
constituents.

“When it came down to the bottom line, there were large numbers of 
people who were deeply pained by the exhibition,” said the 
institute’s president, Howard Sulkin. “Every exhibition should have 
some disagreement or it’s not good art, but this went beyond that.”

The controversy generated by the Chicago exhibit is raising questions 
about the broader role of Jewish museums around the country. As 
Jewish museums come of age and seek to define themselves in the 
contemporary landscape, they are taking more risks.

Indeed, according to trustee Marc Wilkow, who has served on the 
Spertus board for a decade, the museum — which only six months ago 
unveiled its new home, a $50 million architecturally cutting-edge 
building — is seeking to serve as a platform for discussion of timely 
issues.

“Our mission goes well beyond looking back at our heritage. We also 
want to talk about current issues, and serious issues, but we don’t 
want to offend people,” Wilkow said. “That line can be hard to 
identify, unfortunately, and sometimes you don’t know that you’ve 
crossed it until you’ve unwittingly crossed it.”

The recently closed exhibition opened on May 2 and featured the 
institute’s collection of historic “Holy Land” maps, which date back 
to the 16th century, as well contemporary Israeli and Palestinian 
women artists’ works that take up the question of regional borders.

One video piece that raised eyebrows featured a woman asking Israelis 
in Jerusalem for directions to Ramallah. The Israelis all give her 
different directions and think that Ramallah is far away, despite its 
close proximity to Jerusalem.

“The Israelis come across as unfeeling,” said Michael Kotzin, 
executive vice president of the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation 
of Metropolitan Chicago. “It was seen by some as part of a pattern of 
sympathetic treatment of Palestinians and a less sympathetic 
treatment of Israelis.”

Indeed, many Jewish viewers complained that the multimedia show — 
which was part of a larger citywide celebration of maps — expressed 
an anti-Israel bias.

The timing of the provocative exhibition, which opened during the 
same month that Israel celebrated its 60th anniversary, was also 
viewed as particularly jarring for Jewish museum goers who had 
anticipated that the show would celebrate the Jewish state rather 
than raise tough questions about its borders and its treatment of 
Palestinians.

In addition to a number of complaints coming in from individual Jews, 
Chicago’s Jewish federation also brought concerns to the museum’s 
leadership within days of the exhibition’s opening. The federation 
funds the institute to the tune of $700,000 a year, or about 10% of 
its overall $8 million operating budget.

The museum tried conciliatory measures, such as having docents give 
tours of the show to provide context for the work. When that failed 
to assuage critics, the 37-member board voted to shutter the 
exhibition. Over the course of a painstaking four-hour meeting to 
decide the show’s fate, some trustees worried that a decision to 
close the exhibit could be perceived as caving to pressure and that 
it might be seen as censorship. At least one board member, whom 
Sulkin declined to identify, threatened to resign if the exhibition 
closed.

In a Chicago Tribune article, Lynn Pollack of the Chicago chapter of 
the advocacy organization Jewish Voice for Peace said that she was 
disappointed by the decision. “These were mainstream artists who are 
able to display in their own country,” Pollack told the Tribune. “Why 
can’t this art be seen by American Jews? It’s really a shame.”

Jewish museums are straying from more traditional corners nationwide. 
San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum, which was designed by 
Daniel Libeskind and opened to great fanfare in early June, has no 
collection, and instead of looking at Jewish history, it in part 
explores how Judaism in America has affected the broader culture.

Kotzin said that the Spertus board’s decision to close the exhibition 
reflected the fact that Spertus was first and foremost a Jewish 
communal institution. Still, some critics contend that Jewish museums 
should function no differently than other museums, even as they 
tackle thornier subject matter.

Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett, a museum expert who is currently 
leading the core exhibition development team at Warsaw’s Museum of 
the History of Polish Jews, said that the role of museums is to spark 
discussion and engage with controversial issues. And Jewish museums, 
she said, are not exempt from that mandate.

“Museums should open a wider conversation, and there was an 
opportunity here to do just that,” Kirshenblatt- Gimblett said. “I 
don’t think museums should be about consensus. They should be a 
catalyst, and then they should be prepared to deal with the 
repercussions.”

Copyright © 2008 Forward Association, Inc. 
       
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