How art was ransacked by ineptitude, political pandering and confected outrage

As the storm of controversy raged over the cancellation of the artist selected to represent Australia at the 2026 Venice Biennale, Khaled Sabsabi, I wondered what might have been the response to the choice of Indigenous artist Archie Moore for the 2024 biennale in a different political environment.

Moore, a Kamilaroi/Bigambul artist, was awarded the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his exhibition, kith and kin, in the Australian Pavilion. This was the first time Australia had been given the top honour since it began to participate in 1954. Moore’s installation was deeply moving and thought-provoking and was rightly lauded not just internationally but here in Australia. I suspect it may be the first time the Venice Biennale has been mentioned in parliament.

Liz Ann Macgregor and Khaled Sabsabi: “Knowing the artist as I do, I had every confidence ...” Credit: Nick Moir, Steven Siewert

I visited the pavilion and was mesmerised. However, one of the young curators employed by Creative Australia to manage the pavilion told me that she was disturbed by the way in which Archie’s work was being discussed in Australia. She had observed that all the focus was on the extensive family tree traced in chalk on the walls of the pavilion, not the piles of white paper that featured in Moore’s work, containing coronial inquests into the deaths of Indigenous Australians in police custody. I decided to check for myself and discovered she was correct.

What might have happened if this commission had been announced in the context of a federal election? Would some journalist have picked up on his critique of the scandal of Aboriginal deaths in custody? You can imagine how an opposition party that is questioning support for Welcome to Country and the use of the Aboriginal flag could have played that one.

Khaled Sabsabi’s past work was criticised in one newspaper article behind a paywall, amplified by the political response referencing two works. Those works, depicting a former Hezbollah leader and the Twin Tower terrorist attacks, were made almost two decades ago, in very different circumstances. Neither was the work that Sabsabi was to have taken to the 2026 biennale.

Images online and short descriptions cannot convey the artist’s intent, especially when it is ironic and multilayered. Thank You Very Much, the title of the video work referencing 9/11, is not the artist applauding the attack, but taken from a George W Bush quote included in the piece.

The Australian, whose article provoked this sorry episode, now says “those works were at least ambiguous in their suggestion of any support for either”. As Rex Butler and Paris Lettau write in Memo magazine: “Maybe its two reporters have now actually looked at the works.”

Media attacks on contemporary art are nothing new. What is unprecedented is the response of the national arts funding body: the cancellation of Sabsabi’s biennale commission, only six days after it was announced and strongly endorsed by Creative Australia chief executive Adrian Collette as follows: “Khaled Sabsabi’s work, in collaboration with curator Michael Dagostino, reflects the diversity and plurality of Australia’s rich culture, and will spark meaningful conversations with audiences around the world.”

What I found particularly curious about the reasoning for cancellation was the reference to the “prolonged and divisive debate”, according to Creative Australia, that the work would generate. It seems that Creative Australia has the power of a clairvoyant to foresee what the public response would have been.

This is a power that I, as a curator with 32 years of leading contemporary art galleries, do not have. I did not see an issue when it was announced – we showed one of the Sabsabi works referenced in The Australian at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Knowing the artist as I do, I had every confidence he would make a work that dealt with important issues of empathy and community at this fraught time in history. He is an experienced and committed artist who would treat this commission with the seriousness it deserves. That’s why the proposal for Venice, a collaboration with Dagostino, a highly respected curator, was chosen by a distinguished panel of experts.

What causes public controversy is unknowable in advance. I remember my board at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, asking me to make sure we didn’t present anything controversial that would upset local politicians as we sought funding for a major new building for the gallery. To which I replied: I have no idea how to second-guess what will stir up controversy.

There had been no negativity around an exhibition by Chilean/Australian artist Juan Davila, whose work had been seized by the police in Sydney in 1982 (and released at the behest of then premier Neville Wran). When Ikon received lottery funding, the work of Argentinian artist Victor Grippo, which we had shown several years previously, hit the Daily Mail’s headlines in a typical “waste of public money” rant because the work included potatoes. Who could have foreseen that?

At the MCA, I once had an interesting example of differing interpretations. We briefed the board about a work that included a strident image of a prominent politician as a pig. A board member asked that we get legal advice on defamation. An interesting response came back: if the work was shown in Queensland, we would probably lose the case; in NSW, we would probably win. Context is critical, as is briefing those who might be questioned about the work. And I would only defend works when I was confident of the artists’ motivations. Controversy for its own sake is not productive.

It is rarely the public that complains – controversy is driven by the media. Public response is always varied, as works of art are complex and open to different interpretations. Recall the outcry over Sensation, an exhibition of young British artists in 1997. In London, it was a painting of child murderer Myra Hindley that caused the biggest outcry. When the exhibition opened at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani threatened the museum’s funding over a work by Chris Ofili, which was described as blasphemous in a newspaper article. Different work criticised in a different context. The same exhibition was planned for Australia but, following the controversy, the director of the National Gallery cancelled it after consulting the arts minister, whose response is unknown.

While I respect the views of those who have suggested it is better to avoid topics that might fuel controversy and division in these terrible times, we must maintain confidence in art’s ability to encourage us to be open-minded in our outlook, tolerant in our attitude to difference, to bring us to new understanding of complex issues, to generate empathy. This is what is behind Khaled and Michael’s proposal.

Thanks to bureaucratic ineptitude and political pandering to confected media outrage, we will not have the opportunity to make up our own minds through experiencing this work for ourselves in the splendid setting of the pavilion in Venice. Hopefully, Khaled and Michael will present the work nonetheless and prove the doubters wrong.

Dr Liz Ann Macgregor was the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia from 1999 until 2021.