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Guggenheim Foundation Cancels Shanghai Exhibition of Middle Eastern Art

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced that it has called off its upcoming UBS MAP exhibition, which was scheduled to open at the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai on April 15.

A short statement released by the foundation on March 17 says that the Guggenheim and the museum “mutually agreed” on cancelling “But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa in Shanghai,” due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

The exhibition was hosted by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in April 2016 under the title “But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa.” Curated by Sara Raza, the show was the third installment of the UBS MAP Global Art Initiative—a program that aimed to increase access to contemporary art and education on a global scale and to diversify the museum’s collection. Showcasing eighteen works by seventeen artists, ten of whom released a statement criticizing the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum for breaking off talks with Gulf Labor, the exhibition was originally supposed to travel to the Pera Museum in Istanbul in 2017. In February, it was announced that it would be displayed at The Rockbund instead.

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