Italy’s culture minister backs Israel after calls to exclude it from Venice Biennale
Gennaro Sangiuliano pushes back against open letter protesting Jewish state’s participation in art fair, saying it ‘has the duty to bear witness to its people’ after October 7
Italy’s culture minister firmly backed Israel’s participation in the Venice Biennale after thousands of artists, curators and critics signed an open letter calling to exclude the Israeli national pavilion from this year’s contemporary art fair due to the war against Hamas in Gaza.
The online letter was signed by more than 17,000 people through Wednesday, including current and past Biennale participants as well as winners of the Turner Prize, an annual prize presented to a British visual artist.
Italian Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano expressed solidarity with Israel in a statement Tuesday, saying it “not only has the right to express its art but has the duty to bear witness to its people precisely in a moment during which it was struck hard by merciless terrorists.”
Israeli Culture Minister Miki Zohar affirmed Israel’s participation and thanked Sangiuliano for “his strong, professional support.”
“Art is a bridge between cultures and between people – and we will continue to firmly set out against attempts to boycott Israel in international forums,” Zohar said in a statement.
The Biennale ruled out excluding Israel or Iran, the object of a second petition, saying that any country recognized by the Italian government may request to participate.
The letter, by an ad-hoc group called “Art Not Genocide Alliance,” noted that the Venice Biennale previously banned South Africa over its apartheid policy of white minority rule, and excluded Russia in the wake of the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The group’s statement made no mention of the October 7 Hamas attack or the atrocities terrorists carried out.
“The Biennale has been silent about Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians,” the letter said. “We are appalled by this double standard.”
Signatories include the 2023 Turner Prize winner Jesse Darling, who participated in the 2019 Biennale, as well as Faisal Saleh, the director of the Palestine Museum US who said a proposed exhibit for this edition was rejected.
Israel is among 88 national participants in the 60th Venice Biennale of contemporary art, which runs from April 20-November 24. The exhibition in the Israeli Pavilion is titled “Motherland” by artist Ruth Patir.
Palestinian artists are participating in collateral events, and will appear in the main show, titled “Foreigners Everywhere” curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the artistic director of Brazil’s Sao Paulo Museum of Art.
Israel has been facing mounting international criticism, including in the arts world, over its offensive in the Palestinian enclave, which was triggered by a massive October 7 attack by Palestinian terror group Hamas on southern Israel.
The Hamas raid killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, amid horrific atrocities, including widespread gang rape, torture, and mutilation of victims. Some 3,000 attackers who burst through the border from the Gaza Strip rampaged murderously through southern areas slaughtering those they found, in some cases butchering entire families as they huddled in their homes. At an outdoor music festival, 364 people were massacred. Terrorists also abducted 253 people of all ages — including the elderly and infants — who were taken hostage in Gaza. Some 130 are still being held.
Israel responded to the attack with a military campaign to topple the Hamas regime, destroy the terror group and free the hostages, over half of whom remain in captivity.
Nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to Hamas-run health authorities, though these figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 12,000 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
