Tal al-Zaatar in Tuscany

a s h a s a lt iThe ques tions of sol i dar ity in the arts, of its myr iad cre a tive man i fes ta tions, of the mechan ics of its medi a tion and the trans mis sion of expe ri ence, and of mem ory are at the cen ter of our research-based exhi bi tion Past Disquiet.For this con tri bu tion to Critical Times, we have excerpted mate ri als from Past Disquiet reveal ing the actions under taken by groups of art ists in Tuscany in 1976 to rally the gen eral pub lic in sol i dar ity with Palestinian ref u gees in Lebanon, caught under siege in the Tal al-Zaatar camp.Past Disquiet is a long-term research pro ject that has taken the form of a tour ing archi val and doc u men tary exhi bi tion 1 (begin ning in 2015), sem i nars, presen ta tions, and a pub li ca tion 2 that revis its and reanimates intersecting his to ries of militant, artis tic, and museo log i cal prac tices that connected to tricontinental, anti-impe ri al ist sol i dar ity move ments between the 1960s and the 1980s.Early in the research pro cess, we encoun tered the notions of the museum-in-exile and the sol i dar ity museum.Consequently, we ded i cated con sid er able effort to understand ing the ori gin of these two notions and their mech a nisms by study ing the traces of four col lec tions of art whose his to ries had sig nif cant inter sec tions.These are the International Art Exhibition for Palestine, which was presented in Beirut in 1978; the Museo Internacional de la Resistencia Salvador Allende (MIRSA), which was orga nized by Chilean exiles and their sup port ers after the 1973 coup d'tat in Chile, as well as its ear lier incar na tion, the Museo de la Solidaridad, which was in exis tence from 1971 to 1973; the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano en Solidaridad con Nicaragua, prompted by the frst San di nista gov ern ment; and the Art Contre/Against Apartheid col lec tion, which toured inter na tion ally in the years lead ing up to the fall of the apart heid regime in South Africa.In addi tion to shar ing a core idea, these four muse ums-in-exile or sol i dar ity col lec tions dem-