The Koffler center of the arts in Toronto is affiliated with the UJA Federation, one of the leading Jewish organizations. It is dedicated to arts with a Jewish angle. The latest shocker-nonshocker: Reena Katz is a Jewish artist who was to open a project about Jewish life in an old part of Toronto at the Koffler on May 20th. Then the Koffler found out she had participated in Israeli Apartheid Week. Uh-oh. From the outraged/sad statement from Katz and her curator Kim Simon [emphases mine]:
Late on Thursday, May 7th we received an email requesting our
attendance at an urgent meeting with Lori Starr and Mona Filip,
scheduled for Friday, May 8th at 9:00 AM. When we inquired about the
agenda of the meeting, Filip refused to answer. The next morning,
twelve days before the scheduled opening of a project involving over
seventy participants, we attended the meeting. We were shocked to learn
that the Koffler would be dissociating itself from Katz and our project
solely on the basis of her political affiliations they said they had
discovered on the Internet. Of particular concern was Katz’s
participation in Israeli Apartheid Week. Starr made a verbal offer to
honor the full funding of the project while removing the Koffler’s
name, logo and URL from any related material…. The one-hour
meeting ended with many questions unanswered, and it was agreed that we
would be in contact again with the Koffler on Monday, May 11th about
whether and how to continue such a difficult working relationship. In
less than one hour after this meeting, the Koffler
and its parent organization United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto
(UJA) issued separate public statements of dissociation from Katz.
Koffler states that the exhibition will go up, apparently at the center, but that it is dissociating itself from the artist and removing its endorsement.
As a Jewish cultural
institution, an agency of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, the
Koffler Centre of the Arts will not associate with an artist who
publicly advocates the extinction of Israel as a Jewish state. The
Koffler considers the existence and wellbeing of Israel as a Jewish
state to be one of its core values.
More from Katz, a Yiddish-speaker from a family of Holocaust survivors:
I have not stated that I advocate for the “extinction of Israel as a Jewish State” as the Koffler’s statement claims. What I do state publicly is that I am an anti-Zionist Jew. This is an ideological stance, not one that determines any specific outcome for the contemporary state of Israel. I consider the Koffler’s press release a blatant misrepresentation of my position as well as that of IAW [Israeli Apartheid Week].
I do not expect the Koffler or the UJA to agree with my political leanings. The issue here is the silence because of my political affiliations, and the stonewalling of internal dissent and debate within our cultural institutions. I am deeply committed to open discussion both within Jewish communities and with Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities worldwide. Dissent and discourse are crucial parts of this now global conversation; silencing and blocklisting are cowardly and toxic. At no point along the way was I asked to represent myself, my ideas, or the mandates of the groups I belong to, despite amicable, almost daily contacts with Filip for many months.
And from Simon:
In their public dissociation from Katz’s exhibition, not on the basis
of the aesthetics and content of the work but rather on the presumed
opinions of the artist, the Koffler has entered into a practice of
cultural blacklisting reminiscent of the 1950s and McCarthyism. I
cannot overstate my disappointment in this institution that claims its
mission as strengthening “identity and community while fostering an
appreciation of difference.”
