The Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris is drawing criticism for its decision to co-found a museum of Modern and contemporary art in the West Bank. In October, the president of the IMA, Jack Lang, signed an agreement with Elias Sanbar, the Palestinian delegate to Unesco, to launch a museum in Ramallah. French artists including François Boisrond and Gérard Fromanger have donated nearly 100 works to the project. Lang says that the IMA plans to house these works temporarily while the museum is under construction.
But Lang’s statement to the French website Télérama that the new institution “will evoke the Resistance Museum of Salvador Allende”, which opened in Santiago in 2005, angered officials at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris, an organisation dedicated to researching the Holocaust. In a letter to the French culture minister, the centre’s director for international relations Shimon Samuels wrote: “By drawing this parallel, Lang designates Israeli democracy as a fascist Pinochet-style military dictatorship.” He also called on the secretary to block funding for the planned museum.
A spokesman for the IMA declined to comment. The French ministry of culture said that it has referred the matter to the ministry of foreign affairs. Funding details and a construction schedule have not been confirmed.