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":872250,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5310],"tags":[69259,8271,2000,299,6968,2520,105892,1824,247536,247538,837,247537,22568],"class_list":["post-872249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-anti-semitism","tag-contemporary-art","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-exhibition","tag-foreign-office","tag-german-foreign-office","tag-germany","tag-goethe-institute","tag-intensive-german","tag-israel","tag-palestinian-artist","tag-vilnius"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116348293330043184","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872249\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}