Review
“Those who are still willing to engage in debate over fundamental democratic concerns like the freedom of speech, of art, or of academic scholarship without the threat of sanctions seem to be retreating into pre-curated publics that pose no threat of escalation and do no damage to the reputations of institutions in Germany or abroad or to the organizers’ careers. Keywords like ideological litmus test, loyalty oaths, and de-facto censorship keep coming up in conversations with museum leaders, curators, and artists,1 suggesting that institutions are on the defensive, quasi-condemned to engage in self-protection against the very public on behalf of whom, according to their democratic mission, they are acting. The question, though, is whether institutions are protecting that public by protecting themselves, and whether their impression of having been driven into a corner is correct. Are they not actually as active as ever, their power to shape the debate undiminished? And are not strategies like the introduction of sheltered debate formats more an expression of feeling overwhelmed and fearful, of retreating into self-reference, than of actual threats?”
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“Fareed Armaly’s [decision] to decline the 2025 Käthe Kollwitz Prize illustrates how the criteria that circulate in the discussion around the alleged or actual limits of the freedom of art are, at best, only loosely connected to manifestly unconstitutional subject matter, while the great majority of the regulations take sweeping aim at a very wide field that largely eludes legal analysis and in which categorizations are inevitably based on suspicions. Born in the US to Palestinian parents, Armaly has lived in Germany for decades and for some time was an institutional leader himself, directing the renowned Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. He gained recognition for his abundant installation of archival materials based on extensive research, such as those at Documenta 11, in which he critically examines not only conflict in the Middle East but also the formation of Palestinians’ political identity. … His own […] works, Armaly adds, actually grew out of the experience of a mutual integration of cultural and social spheres since the 1970s and occupy the “historical blanks” of cultural institutions regardless of which side they are on. He believes that the dialogue with institutions on which his research has been premised is compromised by an atmosphere of forced declarations of loyalty. […] Having been put in this situation, he does not wish his art to be either rejected or supported by the government.”
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“That is why institutions are right to be inscreasingly concerned that these debates, as inevitable as they are, will take place without them in the future. An extra-institutional culture of debate that the institutions no longer have a hand in shaping will, in the long run, lead to the ossification of their work.”
(Excerpt)
Footnotes
- Similarly, the conversations conducted in preparation for this text could only take place under the assurance of anonymity and thus in a protected space. ↩
- Armaly writes: “I focused on the question of artistic practice intertwined with an open definition of art, informed by a politics of culture, nation, identity, and representation. Thus, I situated my projects in dialogue with institutional frameworks, articulating epistemic fields at the intersection of postcolonial and diasporic practices and theories through architectures, media and archaeologies [...] The spectre of litmus tests and loyalty oaths, combined with anti-intellectual arts and culture media voices, targets critical discourse and studies and contributes to structural racism. In such a context of intimidation, liberal cultural institutions appear to adopt complacency and self-censorship. All this, consciously or unconsciously, structurally performs the ongoing dehumanization of Palestinians by obscuring and abstracting their agency and voice. [...] There have been numerous periods during my productivity as an artist in Germany that I would have gladly accepted this honor. However, at this historical juncture, I am unable to align myself with any institution operating under the current cultural policy framework of the German government. To maintain my voice as an artist and speak meaningfully through your act of recognition, I must decline this award.” See the full text, “Letter from Fareed Armaly to Akademie President Joanna Maria Piaggesi on 7 August 2024. Subject: Awarding of the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2025” available at the Akademie der Künste website: www.adk.de/de/akademie/pdf/2025/KKP_Letter_Fareed-Armaly.pdf. ↩