Oolite Arts, a Miami Beach-based nonprofit arts center, removed from view an artwork featuring a pro-Palestinian slogan — a move that came to light via an open letter circulated online by a group of South Florida artists, creatives, and workers.
The letter calls for the resignation of Oolite Arts board chair Marie Elena Angulo over the alleged censorship
The work, created by Vũ Hoàng Khánh Nguyên and titled How we live like water, was installed on March 27 in a display window Oolite maintains at the Walgreens at 6700 Collins Ave. in Miami Beach.
According to a statement the artist shared alongside the letter, the work was removed on Friday, May 3.
"The Oolite Arts Board of Directors made the decision to remove my artwork during a phone call on May 3 without my consent, and they notified me only after they initiated the removal process," Vũ, who identifies as queer and uses they/he pronouns, writes. "[T]he board's decision was in response to a letter directed to the board from 'a group of Jewish lawyers' claiming that my work contains a political message that they find offensive."
New Times reached Vũ through a representative but they declined to comment.
An anonymous source shared emails with New Times in which Angulo orders the artwork taken down.
In a May 3 email sent to Oolite staff, Angulo wrote that Jeffrey Gilbert, a lawyer at the firm Greenspoon Marder LLP, had contacted her privately, "speaking on behalf of a group of Jewish South Beach residents."
The group took issue with Vũ's usage of the phrase "From the river to the sea," the central feature in their artwork, which replaces the words "river" and "sea" with photographic images of each respective body of water.
"That statement is viewed by some as hate speech and it is contrary to our DEI statement," Angulo wrote. "It should come down."
In a separate email to staffers, she wrote, "To be clear, this is an order."
One Person's Call
In a subsequent email she sent the Oolite board this week, Angulo confirmed that she had acted unilaterally, explaining that "our agreement with Walgreens limits what we can display on their windows/private property."New Times left voicemails requesting comment on two separate phone numbers associated with Angulo but had not heard back at the time of publication.
Aside from her activities with Oolite and as an art collector, Angulo is an attorney for the international corporate law firm White & Case. The firm is closely tied to the State of Israel and Israeli companies and announced in March that it had advised the Israeli government on an international bond offering.
Another email reveals that Oolite's resident show, "Everything is a Spiral," was postponed because the artwork was taken down. The exhibition was originally planned to open Wednesday, May 8, before curator Dejha Carrington backed out along with several artists whose work was to be included in the show. In a statement provided to New Times, Carrington said, "We have together decided to pause and make space for a more imminent internal dialogue between the artists and stakeholders at Oolite Arts that is unrelated to this exhibit."
Carrington said the staff and resident artists convened ahead of the opening to discuss the situation and ultimately decided to postpone the show owing to the incident involving Vũ. "We decided together that we wanted to make place for this conversation to take priority, between the stakeholders at Oolite and artists in residency," she added. "And by stakeholders I mean the board."
Some of the artists in the show, including Oolite residents Alejandra Moros, Carrington Ware, Chire "VantaBlack" Regans, Lee Pivnik, and Diana Larrea, also signed the open letter. In addition to demanding Angulo's resignation as board chair, the artists call for Oolite to "publicly disclose its financial investments which on average have returned approximately $2.3 million each of the last four years."
Other demands include increased transparency and consistency, and a review of existing policies, especially those that pertain to "removal or potential censorship of artwork." The artists have called for a town hall between the board and staff, current resident artists, and alumni to be held by May 31. (The group created a website, Oolite Arts Accountability, where it has uploaded the open letter along with Vũ's statement.)
"We are disturbed by Oolite Arts' censorship of Vũ's work, their total lack of transparency around this decision, and the dangerous precedent it sets for art organizations like Oolite Arts, institutions claiming to be led by the needs of artists," the letter reads. "Without transparency or communication from Oolite Arts' Board of Directors, we are left to conclude that they considered a request from a third party reason enough to censor an artist — and that the institution's board as a whole considers itself, its financial assets, and any third party it supports far more important than the integrity and protection of the artist and broader artistic community they claim to support and from whose cultural production they benefit."
The letter references Vũ's experience as a Vietnam War refugee, comparing that conflict to the current one in Gaza.
"Vũ is a child of refugees who were forcefully displaced from their ancestral homeland due to American intervention in the region. The Vietnam War triggered protests that mirror today's protests against the war on Gaza. Miami, which Vũ also considers home, was represented in the removed artwork by a photograph of the Atlantic Ocean. Vũ's artwork references water as a site of struggle for all oppressed peoples. The work invokes the phrase 'from the river to the sea' as a reminder to viewers that water is a precious, borderless resource that connects us all."
Staff Hits Reply-All
On Thursday, May 9, six Oolite staffers entered the fray via an internal email in support of Vũ, accusing the board of "a significant abuse of power.""The decision to sanitize, erase, and censor Vũ's work is reflective of the glaring imbalance of power between the board chair and executive committee members and Oolite staff and the artists we claim to support," that missive reads in part. "The board chair and executive committee members have chosen to alienate the artists that it claims to serve while sitting on a $100 million endowment that came from the sale of a building that was historically funded by the artists of the organization."
The letter continues, "The expectation that we, as staff, should be silent and complicit with regard to the board's censorship of Vũ is insulting and a disservice to the work that we do to garner trust from the artists in the community."
The letter demands a public statement "acknowledging the removal of Vũ's work," a public apology to the artist and monetary compensation, creation of an advisory committee of current and former Oolite staff and resident artists, and external counsel to investigate the incident.
In a statement sent to New Times just prior to publication, Oolite Arts' board of trustees acknowledged the controversy, writing that it "deeply regrets that the removal of Vũ Hoàng Khánh Nguyên’s artwork has offended some in our community, and that its contents offended others in our community. We believe strongly in the right to artistic expression, but the particular phrase highlighted in this piece is perceived by many as a literal call for violence against them."
The statement also expresses regret that the board did not take more time to discuss the decision with its artists and staff. Moving forward, the trustees vow to evaluate Oolite's decision-making process and institute clear guidelines for artists.
The Conflict So Far
The controversy over Vũ's work is transpiring against the backdrop of a desperate hour in the ongoing war in Gaza, in which more than 35,000 Palestinians have perished, according to the most recent tallies. As the Israeli military prepares to assault Rafah, the last place of refuge for millions of Gazans who've already fled the carnage in the north of the territory, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected a ceasefire agreement brokered by Egypt and Qatar and agreed to by Hamas.On this side of the Atlantic, Israel's actions have seemingly reached a tipping point: President Joe Biden, who has been staunch in his support for Israel, declared on Thursday that the U.S. would withhold weapons shipments to Israel in the event of an attack on Rafah. Meanwhile, protesters on college campuses across America demanding their universities divest from Israel have faced increasingly violent police crackdowns.
On those campuses and elsewhere, debate continues to rage over the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," which reportedly dates back to 1964. In its original context, the slogan — promoted by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which now represents the Palestinian people at the United Nations — called for a secular, democratic Palestinian state in the area that encompasses the territory claimed by both the Israeli and Palestinian states, spanning from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Some organizations view the phrase as antisemitic, including the Anti-Defamation League, which describes it as a call for the "removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland." Companies, including Meta, which owns the social media sites Facebook and Instagram, are considering whether the phrase constitutes hate speech. In April, a resolution condemning the phrase, sponsored by Republican Rep. Anthony D'Esposito of New York, was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Oolite incident mirrors a similar case that unfolded at ICA Miami in March, when a portrait of Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said by artist Charles Gaines was removed at the urging of board members. The episode sparked outrage from activists and the artist himself, who, like Vũ, reportedly was not consulted before the work was pulled from view.
Oolite Arts was founded in 1984 as ArtCenter/South Florida by ceramicist Ellie Schneiderman. In addition to supporting Miami artists through grants, residency opportunities, and the annual Ellies awards, its current headquarters at 924 Lincoln Rd. in Miami Beach hosts exhibition spaces, studios for resident artists, classrooms, and other programming. Many South Florida artists have benefitted from the organization's programming, including Teresita Fernandez, Pepe Mar, Jillian Mayer, and Monica Sorelle.
In 2019, the organization changed its name to Oolite Arts in a nod to the porous limestone bedrock that forms the Biscayne Aquifer underneath South Florida. In 2022, the organization announced it would move to a new $30 million purpose-built complex in Miami's Little River neighborhood. Funds for the new facility, which is designed by the architecture firm Barozzi Veiga and slated to open in 2025, came from the $88 million sale of Oolite's former headquarters at 200 Lincoln Rd. to a local real estate developer in 2014, according to the Art Newspaper.
