San Francisco Jewish Museum Has a Blank Space for Dissenting Artists

This winter, a guest curator selected nearly 70 artworks to include in the California Jewish Open, an exhibition starting Thursday at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum. More than 500 Jewish-identifying artists in the state had submitted works under the general theme of “connection.” Many pieces were apolitical. Some articulated support for Israel. Others expressed solidarity with Palestinians.

Executives and curators had expected jostling perspectives when they issued an open call in November, at a moment the American Jewish community was already splintering over Israel’s military response in Gaza to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.

What they did not foresee, though, was that after the selections were made in February, seven artists (two worked as a pair) would pull their six works out of the show in April following back-and-forths with the museum. The artists made demands, including wanting control of their works’ presentation, institutional divestment by the museum from companies that do business with Israel and boycotting Israel itself.

Now, visitors will see, alongside the 63 works by 47 artists in the exhibition, six wall spaces left intentionally blank by curators — preserved, according to accompanying text, “to honor the perspectives that would have been shared through these artworks, and to authentically reflect the struggle for dialogue that is illustrated by the artists’ decisions to withdraw.”

The dispute and the museum’s response go to the heart of a debate over how institutions ought to lend voice to dissent and how artists might balance the idea of expressing their disagreement by pulling out of a show against remaining in the exhibition as dissenters.