The Palestinian Museum sits nestled among the fertile hills of the West Bank in the university town of Birzeit, several miles north of Ramallah. Its $24 million, LEED-certified campus designed by Dublin-based architecture firm Heneghan Peng was inaugurated on May 18, 2016, days after the sixty-eighth anniversary of the Nakba, the events that led to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Five years on, the museum has a robust programming schedule and a string of successful exhibitions under its belt. To further explore the role museums can play in reclaiming narratives
This month marks a
year since the coronavirus pandemic initiated a series of global shutdowns across art organisations. The immediate effect of the pandemic was a swift shift to digital programming: exhibitions became walk-throughs; fair booths became
virtual viewing rooms; and Q&As became video chats. The amount of material made available online, as well as its uptake among the public, was overwhelming, fuelled perhaps by adrenalin and sublimated panic.
“The digital sphere has always had this sort of secondary position, and people didn’t take it as seriously as they should
- Krist Gruijthuijsen
That flurry of initial activity has subsided, but the “new normal” is still emerging. What have been the effects of a year’s worth of online programming on art organisations, artists and audiences – and specifically for the Arab world?