The German Foreign Office has criticized the country’s own cultural organization, the Goethe-Institut, over the participation of a US-Palestinian artist in a recent exhibition in Lithuania with German funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere should be no doubt whatsoever at events organized by German intermediary organizations that the federal government firmly rejects anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel,\u201d the ministry said in a statement on Saturday in response to a report in the Bild tabloid.<\/p>\n
It was made clear to the Goethe-Institut – which is largely funded by the Foreign Office – that “greater care is required in the early stages of planning and organizing events with partner organizations,” the ministry added.<\/p>\n
The exhibition “Bells and Cannons \u2013 Contemporary Art in Times of Militarization” ran from mid-October to early March in Vilnius and featured a film by Basma al-Sharif, a Kuwaiti-born Palestinian artist currently based in Berlin.<\/p>\n
The filmmaker’s appearance at the Dusseldorf Art Academy in western Germany earlier this year was the subject of a controversy after Jewish organizations accused her of anti-Semitic posts online.<\/p>\n
The exhibition in the Lithuanian capital was a collaboration between the Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius (CAC), the Goethe-Institut in Vilnius and the Academy of Arts in Berlin.<\/p>\n
The CAC curated the exhibition, a spokeswoman for the Goethe-Institut confirmed, adding that “no works with anti-Semitic content were on display.”<\/p>\n
However, she said some posts on the artist\u2019s Instagram account were not compatible with the Goethe-Institut\u2019s values, “specifically the denial of Israel\u2019s right to exist.”<\/p>\n
The cultural organization had not been aware of the posts. “We deeply regret this,” the spokeswoman added.<\/p>\n
She said the Goethe-Institut rejects any form of anti-Semitism, and sees the recognition of Israel\u2019s right to exist as indispensable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The German Foreign Office has criticized the country’s own cultural organization, the Goethe-Institut, over the participation of a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2319,745,295,471,2316,5,2315,2318,57,2317,2320],"class_list":{"0":"post-2169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-anti-semitism","9":"tag-contemporary-art","10":"tag-exhibition","11":"tag-foreign-office","12":"tag-german-foreign-office","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-goethe-institute","15":"tag-intensive-german","16":"tag-israel","17":"tag-palestinian-artist","18":"tag-vilnius"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}