Picasso in Palestine - Annie Fletcher
Building upon her research into institutional collections and narratives about places and territories, Annie Fletcher will discuss the plan for the development of a museum of contemporary art for East Jerusalem, a project that speculates a relationship to location. This discussion draws upon the Van Abbemuseum’s recent Picasso in Palestine project, which involved lending an original painting: “Buste de Femme” (1943) by Pablo Picasso to the International Art Academy Palestine (IAAP) based in Ramallah in 2011 and the long term relation ship between the Van Abbe museum and Al Ma’mal’s long term project to build a contemporary art collection in exile know as CAMP. Like the Picasso in Palestine, The Museum for Contemporary Art in East Jerusalem, includes introspection about the role museums play in forming cultural identity, including the bureaucratic and normalising measures of collecting, and exhibiting art. With all the protocols involved in actively producing culture how are museums part of an international dialogue that grounded in concepts of location; how does this idea pursue a policy where culture is seen as a levelling or humanist product; and how can transnational partnerships support meaningful sites of dissent and self-determination?