It has been reported that the American collector and patron William (‘Bill’) Arnett died on 12 August at the age of 81. Beginning in the 1980s, Arnett focused his collecting energies on the work of self-taught African American artists from the Southern United States. In 2010, he founded the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to documenting, preserving and promoting this work. The foundation has holdings of some 1,000 pieces by more than 160 artists, including Thornton Dial, Lonnie Holley, and the quilt-makers of Gee’s Bend.
Palestinian art is travelling far beyond the places where it was created. From Ramallah to Dubai, and onward to collectors across Europe, the United States and beyond, a new generation of Palestinian artists is finding an increasingly international audience — while continuing to negotiate questions of memory, identity, displacement and belonging.