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This article presents an overview of Palestinian exhibition making in the twentieth century. It addresses an absence of academic engagement with how, starting in the 1920s, a repertoire of Palestinian pedagogical and representational materials, temporary and makeshift spaces, and multiple protodiplomatic and unionized efforts under the Palestinian Liberation Organization informed a culture of exhibition making that created critical sites for: cultivating and critiquing taste within art movements and among Palestinians; operationalizing national sentiment and political consciousness; and mobilizing international support around the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause. Specifically, the article accounts for the Palestinian mobilization of exhibitions in response to European and Zionist expansionism (1917–48), as a social praxis of community building and resilience (1948–64), and as a form of political resistance through the radical internationalization of Palestinian cultural affairs (1964–87). It culminates with a discussion of the first intifada and the morphing of exhibition culture into the Palestinian Authority's state-building project following the Oslo Accords (1987–93). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What if an artwork changes its shape and sense with every encounter? Is there such a thing as polyphonic meaning, resulting from the interactions with an artwork? Barbara Preisig's semi-fictional play brings the reader to a scene at Kunstmuseum Bern. It tells the story of a guided public tour through El Anatsui's Solo exhibition Triumphant Scale. The curator, eager to provide key information about the works, finds herself in a vivid discussion around Anatsui's work Gravity and Grace. Does the artwork's shape resemble an elephant? Should the patterns remind us of the colorful Ghanaian fabrics or, in contrast, do they depict nothing but light, form, transparency and physicality? May El Anatsui be called an African artist or not? The audience – among them a protestant pastor, a musician, the artist, seven-year-old Emma – gathers on stage, observed by the narrator, who listens closely to their interpretations. When suddenly five historical busts, part of the neo-classical staircase, get involved in an argument with the artwork, the discussion threatens to get out of hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]