Initiatives have sprung up in the aftermath of the explosion, with the goal of raising funds for relief efforts in the city and reconstructing its devastated cultural sector.
Walid Raad
German Museum Will Give Artist Walid Raad Prize Despite City’s Objection
Aachen withdrew its decision to award the Lebanese-American artist a €10,000 (~$10,900) prize for providing an “evasive” answer to an inquiry about his position on the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Walid Raad Uses Fact and Fiction to Tell a Powerful History of Beirut
Raad exposes the way in which our accepted notions of historicizing events are simultaneously fact and fiction.
How to Organize a Biennial In Occupied Territory
The Qalandiya International is in its fourth iteration and offers a bounty of solutions for curators working outside centers of power and wealth.
Curator of Israeli Exhibit Stolen Arab Art Explains It Is a “Hostage-Taking Situation”
An exhibition in Tel Aviv is reputedly using works by leading Arab artists without their permission, and the curators say they’re doing so deliberately to provoke a conversation around the topic of boycott.
Walid Raad’s Playful and Dead-Serious Experiments with History
Raad’s latest exhibition in Beirut explores history, archives, and reality with his signature inscrutability and dry humor.
How Artists Strive to Make Sense of the Archive in the “Middle East”
The ambitious volume Dissonant Archives: Contemporary Visual Culture and Contested Narratives in the Middle East in many ways responds to the post-1990s archive fever, but from a specific geographic locale.
Best of 2016: Our Top 20 NYC Art Shows
This list barely scratches the surface of the city’s artistic offerings this year, from overdue retrospectives to surprising sides of artists we know well.
Guggenheim Breaks Off Negotiations with Gulf Labor Over Migrant Rights
On April 13, the Guggenheim Board of Trustees informed the Gulf Labor Coalition that it will no longer negotiate with the group regarding the living and working conditions of the workers who are and will be building its museum in Abu Dhabi.
In a Performance, Walid Raad Playfully Probes His MoMA Survey
A note of hysteria begins to creep into Walid Raad’s voice as he concludes his hour-long monologue performance, “Scratching on things I could disavow: Walkthrough,” at the Museum of Modern Art.
Unreliable Informants: A Walid Raad Primer
The survey exhibition dedicated the work of Walid Raad, which opens to the public on Monday at the Museum of Modern Art, is a rich and compelling point of entry for anyone seeking a handle on this sly and elusive artist.