Organizers of the annual West Holiday Craft Fest, scheduled for this weekend at The Rotunda on Penn’s campus, have moved the event after they say the university demanded that vendors omit some pro-Palestinian art and sign a written agreement.
Penn owns The Rotunda, the 115-year-old distinctive round building on the south side of Walnut Street near 40th. The venue hosts hundreds of events a year mostly focused on the arts.
Some 30 vendors from the Fest will move instead to the Black Hound Clay Studio at 50th and Baltimore on Dec. 14 and 15 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., according to an Instagram post Friday evening detailing the changes (see below).
The conflict began when an individual contacted Penn, West Holiday Craft Fest and management from The Rotunda objecting to politically-themed art and naming pro-Palestinian vendors in particular, according to organizers.
“Penn’s response to us was to demand a written agreement from all vendors that they would censor their artwork, and to require those singled out to omit certain images from their exhibits,” the post reads.
A similar message appears on the West Craft Fest website.
Organizers wrote that they would stop hosting events on Penn property.
View this post on Instagram
December 14th, 2024 at 9:13 pm
This is wildly inaccurate. The request was to refrain from “bringing any items that depict or incite violence” with specific examples that narrowly defined violence, for example images of “freedom fighters” throwing hand grenades or brandishing machine guns. There was no issue with Palestinian art, pro-Palestinian art, even anti-Israel art as long as there was no explicit depiction of violence. As for claims of censorship, that is clearly disingenuous. I am sure there are many forms of art that would be censored in a heartbeat – art that glorifies violence against anyone, literally anyone, who is not Jewish or Israeli.
December 15th, 2024 at 1:47 pm
Wow, this is really poor reporting. Did you even do your research? The request had nothing to do with removing pro-Palestinian art. It had to do with removing pro-Hamas imagery depicting violence. Censorship is a strong accusation – this was not about “censoring free artistic expression.” It was about not glorifying rape and kidnapping and murder because those subjects may alienate and upset a good portion of the population
December 15th, 2024 at 3:30 pm
My understanding is that the complaint centered on a particular vendor who does sell pro-Palestinian arts and crafts. In particular, I believe that this centered on a wallet that included a famous image of Leila Khalid.
I personally think we need a collective disavowal of all broad brush stroke conflation of anti-Semitism with Palestinian Liberation. I don’t share Hamas’ politics, do believe that war crimes were committed on October 7th, but that is not in contradiction with my repudiation of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, or genocide.
We need principled distinctions between Palestinians advocating for their own survival and the very real existence of Judeophobia, which is by no means synonymous with criticism of Zionism.
December 16th, 2024 at 9:50 am
Agreed – criticism of Israel should not be conflated with hatred of Jews. Similarly, concerns about vendors whose artwork depicts freedom fighters (otherwise known as armed insurgents – a category which also includes the Oathkeepers, Proud Boys, and so on) brandishing weapons against civilians should not be conflated with an Islamophobic or anti-Palestine stance. Moreover, stating that “Penn demands omission of pro-Palestinian art” is deliberately misleading.
We can disagree on policy. We can say “Am Israel Chai” or “Free Palestine” – maybe even both? What is unacceptable, however, is explicit glorification of violence against civilians – any civilians. As you know, it always starts with words and images but rarely ends there. If there were Zionist vendors present at West Craft Fest whose artwork glorified or celebrated violence against Palestinian civilians, I would fight just as hard against it, and I hope you would join me. That’s how you wage peace.
December 16th, 2024 at 11:16 am
The organizers of the craft fest–and wittingly or unwittingly, West Philly Local–are being misleading to the point of dishonesty about what Penn and a concerned individual asked of them (I’m not the individual, but I’ve seen the email exchanges). When they say that the individual and Penn objected to pro-Palestinian art, that’s just not true (a Penn representative, acting outside the wishes of the concerned individual, did at one point make a clumsy, wrong-headed request to omit ‘politically sensitive’ art, but quickly walked that request back once she realized how absurd it was).
The concerned individual did not express concern about pro-Palestinian art and vendors. The individual expressed concern about specific pieces that displayed weapons—a grenade and machine gun, for instance—in a way that felt like an incitement to violence, and that would have made the individual not feel physically safe at the craft fest.
The individual wasn’t concerned about pro-Palestinian art (Free Palestine, etc.) or even anti-Israeli art (I suspect the individual disagrees with the idea that Israel is an apartheid state, but throw that phrase on a poster board, and apart from an eye-roll and an internal, “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” the individual wouldn’t have raised any concerns). The individual only objected to specific pieces that included weapons in a way that seemed to glorify, justify, or incite violence.
Here’s a useful analogy. Instead of Leila Ahmed and her machine gun or the masked grenade thrower in the pieces that the individual expressed concern about, imagine the pieces depicted a Klansman holding a noose or Nathaniel Bedford Forest, the first Grand Wizard of the Klan, brandishing a pair of pistols under the phrase, “The South Will Rise Again.” And imagine the individual expressing concern about the pieces were African-American.
In this analogy, the individual expressing concern didn’t ask that the vendor be prohibited from showing, nor that pieces with phrases like ‘The South Will Rise Again’ be prohibited, only that pieces that featured weapons in a way that could be viewed as incitement to violence be omitted from the fest.
And rather than ask that vendors to omit pieces with weapons, the organizers of the craft fest effectively cancelled the fest, leaving their vendors out in the cold.
People can form their own opinions about what it says about the organizers of the fest that including pieces with weapons was so important to them that they effectively cancelled their own festival rather than omit those pieces.
And when the organizers portray themselves as defending uncensored art and free speech, I suspect that’s also dishonest. Because I don’t imagine they would have any trouble asking my imaginary Klan vendor to leave the Klan pieces with weapons at home.
If you only defend speech that you agree with and only include people you agree with, you can’t claim to be defending free speech or inclusive. You can’t claim the high ground here.
The organizers prioritized the defense of images inciting violence over the needs of their own vendors. And they misrepresented–to the point of dishonesty–what Penn and the concerned individual actually asked of them. If the organizers of the fest can’t be trusted to act in the best of their vendors, maybe vendors should form their own organization.
Now, am I saying that art can’t or shouldn’t include images of weapons that could be construed as inciting violence? Of course not. I personally think that there’s more than enough violence in the world, and that our art should be used to heal and repair the world, but if violence is your jam as an artist, fine. You can make whatever art you want to make.
But the host of a community craft fest, in the interest of creating an inclusive space, has every right to ask that images with weapons that could be construed as inciting violence be omitted from the show they’re hosting.
Sometimes—often, even—goods conflict. In this case, inclusion (a good thing) conflicts with what the organizers are calling uncensored art or free speech (also good things). But it’s disingenuous of them to suggest that they would always be the defenders of uncensored art and free speech. It’s easy to imagine a situation in which they would happily—and easily—prioritize inclusion over free speech (my imaginary Klan vendor example, for instance).
December 16th, 2024 at 11:38 am
The logic that I’m seeing as justification for prior constraint on the removal of art and artists is murky at best, tortuous at worst. We are told here by one individual that it is all REALLY about “explicit glorification of violence against civilians”. Another equates depictions of Palestinian militants with:
Klansman holding a noose or Nathaniel Bedford Forest, the first Grand Wizard of the Klan, brandishing a pair of pistols under the phrase, “The South Will Rise Again.”
This is such a distorted argument as to not merit much response. It seems that there IS indeed a double message about conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
For what it is worth, I am not personally in synch with the rhetoric and imagery of certain “tankie” Western partisans (think Jodi Dean) who wholeheartedly celebrate Hamas. They don’t represent my own politics very well and neither does the State of Iran.
That said, these calls for censorship, prior restraint and/or removal of artists based on arbitrary/poorly defined criteria come off like sleazy pro-Zionist coverups of Ethnic Cleansing, Apartheid and Genocide. Even if the proponents sometimes like to present themselves as “progressive except for Palestine”. This sort of campaign “against anti-Semitism” but for the violence of the Israeli State has been going on for decades and it actually provides cover for the ongoing starvation, torture, killing and maiming of civilians by the Israeli State. This is all very, very wrong- and the folks who are running cover for such abuses should take responsibility and make amends for the wrongful acts that they have committed.
December 16th, 2024 at 12:24 pm
Couldn’t the concerned individual just have not gone to the craft show? I didn’t notice any problematic imagery on the vendor links on the West Craft Fest website but I also didn’t click through and look at each one so maybe I missed it. Was the concerned individual targeting the craft show for some reason? Did they have a personal beef with one of the vendors? It’s all pretty muddy at this point.