Outside a public library in Santa Ana, California, stood a bronze statue of a man holding a book beneath one arm and a dove rising from the other. Palestinian-American poet, scholar, and civil rights leader Alex Odeh was assassinated in 1985, and nine years later Algerian-American artist Khalil Bendib created the work in his honor. The statue was defaced with red paint in 1996 and again the following year; then, in 2020, the dove — a symbol of peace — was stolen before it was eventually recovered.
Now artist Jon Rubin is releasing that dove once more, sending it on a global tour as a living, participatory artwork that draws fresh attention to Odeh’s life and legacy, the ongoing history of anti-Arab violence, and efforts to end occupation and genocide in Palestine — a quiet prayer for peace. This past weekend, it traveled to Los Angeles for an evening of music, poetry, and food. It will next head to the Bay Area, Pittsburgh, and, hopefully, to Jifna, Odeh’s hometown, before returning home to roost.
The project serves as a timely reminder that art is meant to be shared in community, as Patrick Guetta, the artist featured in this week’s edition of A View From the Easel, says, “One of my favorite museums is the street.” Today’s dispatch also looks inside the cheerfully sinister worlds of Trevor Winkfield, and Zendaya wearing 3,000-year-old Iranian artifacts to a movie premiere, which points to larger problems than out-of-touch celebrities.
—Lisa Yin Zhang, associate editor
CORRECTION: Our Daily Newsletter from Friday, July 17, mistakenly stated that three antiquities the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office returned to Mexico were previously held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when in fact only one of them was. We regret the error.
