Samia Halaby is a renowned Palestinian American artist with works displayed internationally at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, Birzeit University in Palestine, the Art Institute of Chicago and many other museums around the world.
On June 29, a retrospective of Halaby’s works will be displayed at Michigan State University's Broad Art Museum. The exhibition, titled “Samia Halaby: Eye Witness,” will be displayed at the museum until Dec. 15.
Curator Rachel Winter worked with Halaby for two years to compile the pieces for the exhibit.
“The exhibition ‘Samia Halaby: Eye Witness' is the artist's first American museum retrospective,” Winter said. “And with that in mind, it was important to me as the curator, to really show the breadth of everything that she has done."
Not only will the exhibit showcase Halaby’s paintings, but it will also include sculptures, digital artwork and some of her drawings.
“She is such a multifaceted thinker and artist," Winter said. "The more than 60 works that will be on display in the exhibition really highlight that."
Halaby is an alumni of MSU, having received her master's degree from the university in 1960. The works on display are there to make an argument that place— whether that be her time in the Midwest, her childhood in Jerusalem, Palestine, or her many travels— is influential to her art.
“I hope audiences leave and understand how place was important, and think about how place can be important in their own lives as well,” Winter said.
Halaby herself noted that the term place has ramifications.
“One is to be seen from a geographic, physiological, you know, how our eye sees it— time, beauty, nature,” Halaby said. “And then there's the national attributes of those who rule our world, what borders have they put around this piece of land that we find beautiful or that we grew up with.”
According to Halaby, place and these two perspectives, one being more political and the other having more to do with nature, have a large influence on everyone.
“It’s a idea that has these two attributes…then that becomes the experience that starts to fill us,” she said, “What we grow up with, what we spend a lot of time with, what we admire, what moves us, and begins to be part of how we think about ourselves and how we think where we come from.”
Through the artwork in this exhibit, Halaby hopes that viewers gain a sense of connection and communication to her.
“(If) they see the similarity between what they experience and something in the painting that would mean to me that they've understood attributes of the painting, and that would be meaningful,” Halaby said. “It becomes a language. The painting, the visual, becomes a language between me and those who look at it.”
Halaby’s time at MSU had a significant influence on her art. According to Winter, it was during her time in East Lansing that she began to paint in earnest with oil on canvas.
“I wanted to bring that story forward for our audiences, in the hopes that not only we learn more about Samia’s artistic practice, we also think more about how the Midwest was this really important space for a lot of different artists over the years,” Winter said.
Interim Director of Broad Steve Bridges said that, in a broader sense, this exhibit exemplifies the museum’s attempt to retain histories that are important to both the region and the world.
“By reclaiming these important histories…we're also forging those narratives and also supporting more visibility for the role that this region and this university and these communities play in global culture,” Bridges said.
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For Halaby, her time in the midwest spent studying at both MSU and the University of Cincinnati, was bittersweet. On one hand, she took a lot away from local professors and grew as an artist.
“To learn methods and ideas from other professors who were not trying to be New York stars… was really useful, it was really enriching,” she said.
On the other hand, the bitter parts of her time in Michigan and in Ohio came from confronting racism as an immigrant to the United States.
“I was a new immigrant having to face all of the attitudes, racist attitudes of the Midwest, which were less pronounced than in the East Coast, and something I wasn't aware of,” Halaby said. “I couldn't name it as racism, but I could see that there were very strange things to get adjusted to.”
While her time as student was at many points positive and influential, Halaby said, in the past few years, the Midwest has not been kind to her.
“In recent times all of my experiences in the Midwest was that all the paintings I sold, all the collections I had in the Midwest, most of them were suddenly going up for auction,” she said. “My presence in the Midwest was being erased by Midwesterners.”
Most recently, in December of last year, it was announced that Halaby’s 30-work show at Indiana University was to be canceled. According to the New York Times, employees of the university’s Eskenazi Museum of Art expressed concerns about Halaby’s social media posts, which supported Palestine and criticized Israel.
The university later sent Halaby a two sentence statement citing “security concerns” as the reason. The cancellation sparked outrage, and a petition was started to reinstate the exhibit.
Following this cancellation, Halaby said she never felt that she received strong reassurance from the administration at MSU that the same would not happen at Broad.
“In my opinion, it has been left to the curator to keep working with me, and I kept working with her out of faith, but I wasn't sure that Michigan State wasn't going to cancel,” Halaby said. “I was taking a guess that essentially, they were sitting on the fence, trying to see how the weather blew.”
Halaby was grateful to receive reassurance from Bridges that the exhibit would continue, but she continues to feel critical of the lack of communication from administration.
“What my criticism is, is not of this institution, nor do I ever want to harm an institution like that; my criticism is of the administrative behavior,” Halaby said. “Administration should be concerned with the students…and the faculty and the quality of learning not be up there in the wind swaying around, wondering what the government or public opinion or propaganda or those who donate money should be thinking.”
Despite her concerns with the administration, she will still be present for the exhibit and wants to be there.
“My criticism is for the wishy-washyness of the administration, not the university,” she said. “The university, and for the students who are learning, and especially for the students who are angry about the situation in Gaza, it is my honor to come and be connected to them.”
