ICA Miami Removes Artwork Depicting Palestinian Scholar Edward Said

Over the course of the retrospective exhibition of works by American conceptual artist Charles Gaines, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA) removed from view an artwork depicting prominent Palestinian scholar Edward Said, who died in 2003.

Part of a series of portraits depicting influential philosophers and theorists, Faces 1: Identity Politics #10, Edward Said was hung as part of a retrospective on the artist that opened on November 16, 2023.

But Gaines’ painting of Said, a Palestinian-American scholar most famous for coining the concept of orientalism in his 1978 book of the same name, vanished from view shortly after the show opened, despite having been featured in press materials and coverage of the show.

According to the original exhibition checklist, six paintings in the “Faces” series were to be included in the show. A December 2023 visit by New Times to the ICA found only four on display, depicting Aristotle, Karl Marx, Luce Irigaray, and Dolores Huerta. The painting of Said, as well as a portrait of American author bell hooks (née Gloria Jean Watkins), were not on view.

Who Asked for the Removal?

Despite numerous attempts to contact museum officials, ICA Miami has offered no explanation for the vanishing act.

A source at the museum believes the painting may have been removed in order to avoid angering pro-Israel members of the ICA’s board of trustees. According to the source, who spoke on condition that their name not be published, the painting was removed at least twice: first in December, after which it was rehung, and then again prior to a fundraising gala on March 2. The source says the second removal took place after several board members stormed out of a February 18 lecture by essayist Cathy Park Hong, who mentioned the ongoing Israel-Palestinian conflict in her remarks.

“Given Said is Palestinian, I would say those funding the museum might not have been too happy to see that in the exhibition,” the source tells New Times.

Neither ICA Miami nor its public relations representatives at Schwartz Media Strategies have responded to repeated requests for comment. A New Times reporter visited the museum on Wednesday, March 13, and was told the entire floor on which the painting had been hung was closed to prepare for an event. Members of the museum’s senior staff declined to meet with the reporter; front desk staff suggested he contact Kerry Kneer, the ICA’s director of exhibitions. A phone call to Kneer went to voicemail; soon after, the reporter received a call from the same number but was disconnected immediately. A follow-up call went directly to voicemail and was not returned.

Hauser & Wirth, the Zurich-headquartered gallery that represents Gaines, has not responded to a request for comment.

Gaines, who is slated to speak at an ICA event ahead of the exhibition’s March 17 closing, frequently alludes to leftist, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonial figures and movements in his work. His retrospective at the museum, titled “Charles Gaines: 1992-2023,” features several politically minded bodies of work, including “Manifestos,” which sets to music texts from the Black Panther Party, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, and other political groups. One of the scholars depicted in “Faces” is that of Karl Marx — a seemingly controversial move in Miami. But Marx’s portrait has stayed up.

In a March 2 Instagram post, the activist group Art Against Displacement noted the absence of the painting, which was and remains listed as part of the show on the Bloomberg Connects app.

“Why was Said removed while the other scholars remained in the show?” the post reads in part. “…The stark removal of a Palestinian, solely based on their Palestinian identity, is chilling against the material reality of the Israeli occupation’s daily, murderous assaults on Palestinians.”

While the ICA continues to maintain its silence, at least one of its founders has demonstrated support for the Israeli cause. Local billionaire Norman Braman reportedly funded Israeli settlements in the West Bank and financially backed noted pro-Israel U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. As the New York Times reported in 2014, Braman and his wife, Irma, promised to “single-handedly” bankroll the ICA’s Design District building; the couple is listed as founders of the institution on the museum’s website. (Irma Braman chairs the executive committee of ICA’s board of trustees.)

New Times reached out to the Braman Art Foundation, asking to speak with Braman. A representative told the reporter he was in a meeting.

The disappearing Said comes amid increased scrutiny of Israel as the country’s military continues its siege in Gaza following an October 7, 2023, raid by Hamas that killed an estimated 1,200 people. Shortly after the attack, the Israeli Defense Forces launched a bombing campaign and military invasion of Gaza that has killed more than 31,000 people, according to recent estimates from the Gaza health ministry.

Israel’s tactics, which include blockades, bombing of hospitals, and shooting at civilians during humanitarian aid drops, have spurred worldwide criticism, including an accusation leveled by South Africa in the International Court of Justice that the country is conducting a genocide against the Palestinian people.

Artists, too, have criticized the Israeli offensive and called for a ceasefire, including film director Jonathan Glazer, who won an Oscar earlier this month for the Holocaust film The Zone of Interest. Glazer used his acceptance speech to compare the complicity of the film’s Nazi characters in the genocide of Jews with the current situation in Gaza, criticizing his own “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people.” Others have involved themselves with campaigns such as Artists for Ceasefire.

History of Censorship

The ICA is far from the first art institution to have been accused of censoring pro-Palestine voices since the war in Gaza began. The International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art has identified a pattern of censorship against Palestinian voices in art institutions in recent months. In London, several artists pulled works from an exhibition at the Barbican Centre after a talk focused on Israel and Palestine was canceled. In Toronto, a Palestinian-American artist protested the alteration of her artwork by the Royal Ontario Museum by conducting an overnight sit-in. And in New York, El Museo Del Barrio drew criticism for removing an artwork featuring Palestinian iconography that the museum itself had commissioned.

Many artists have signed petitions and letters addressing censorship by Western institutions relating to the ongoing conflict in Israel. In January, 650 artists and writers, including Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, signed the Strike Germany petition pledging to boycott German cultural institutions for “McCarthyist policies” relating to pro-Palestinian speech. In December 2023, more than 1,300 artists signed an open letter published by Artists for Palestine UK accusing museums and other cultural institutions of “silencing and stigmatizing” Palestinian viewpoints, while another 2,000 artists and writers, including Nan Goldin, Kara Walker, and Tilda Swinton signed a separate open letter demanding a ceasefire shortly after the war began in October. Artforum fired its top editor, David Velasco, over his signing the letter, prompting mass resignations from the staff.

Closer to home, other South Florida museums have found themselves embroiled in controversy over alleged censorship.

In 2020, Miami Dade College’s Museum of Art and Design faced criticism over its quashing of the research group Forensic Architecture’s plans to investigate the Homestead Child Migrant Detention Center as part of an exhibition at the museum. The investigation was canceled shortly after its announcement at the opening, and the show closed shortly thereafter when the COVID-19 pandemic descended. Also in 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the City of Miami Beach on behalf of a group of Black artists after the city removed a painting of Raymond Herisse at the request of the municipality’s police department. (Herisse was shot dead by Miami Beach police officers in 2011.)

A Moderate Scholar

How does Edward Said figure into all of this? Born to a Palestinian Christian family in British-administered Mandatory Palestine in 1935, he fled the country with his family during the 1947-49 war, which resulted both in the establishment of the State of Israel and the mass displacement of Palestinians known as the Nakhba. Becoming an established and respected intellectual in the U.S., Said taught literature at Columbia University and established himself as a major figure in postcolonial theory alongside the likes of Franz Fanon and Gayatri Spivak. His book Orientalism, a study of the patronizing, marginalizing cultural view of the West toward Middle Eastern and North African people, is considered a foundational text in the field and is still read in universities nationwide.

Alongside his polished academic reputation, Said was a major figure in the Palestinian independence movement and worked for years for pro-Palestinian organizations in the U.S. He was critical of, yet accommodating toward Zionism for most of his career, advocating for a two-state solution until the Oslo Accords of the early 1990s failed to produce a true Palestinian state. A member of the Palestinian National Council for many years, he resigned in 1993 over disagreements with the Palestinian political establishment and began to argue for a single Israeli-Palestinian state thereafter. In 2000, Said courted controversy after he was photographed throwing stones at an Israeli guard post in southern Lebanon shortly after the IDF’s 18-year occupation of that nation ended. He admitted to the act and called it “a symbolic gesture of joy that the occupation had ended.” According to Alexander Cockburn in The Nation, “The FBI was probably tapping Edward Said’s phone right up to the day he died in September 2003.”

Neither an aloof intellectual nor a militant, Said was a complicated figure in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but he has little to do with the present situation in Gaza. That makes his portrait’s disappearance from ICA Miami’s walls all the more inexplicable.