The ‘uncancelled venue’: Palestine Museum offers podium to Palestinian narrative

The Palestine Museum, which first opened as Palestine Museum US in Woodbridge, Connecticut, has expanded across the Atlantic with its first European branch opening last month in the Scottish capital Edinburgh.

During the inaugural ceremony, Faisal Saleh, the founder and relentless visionary behind the museum, greeted guests with a quiet intensity that belied the storm of ideas swirling around him. Born to a Palestinian refugee family displaced from the village of Salama near Jaffa in 1948, Faisal’s journey from the occupied West Bank to US tech entrepreneur to ‘museum maker’ feels like a lifetime distilled into a singular mission: to carve out cultural space where Palestinians can own their narratives.

Indeed, the Palestine Museum is no ordinary art museum. While it proudly showcases contemporary Palestinian art, from the hauntingly expressive to the defiantly hopeful, it also offers something increasingly rare: a platform where Palestinian culture, history and resistance can be centred without apology or censorship.

Director Faisal Saleh on the steps of Palestine Museum Scotland located at 13A Dundas Street, Edinburgh. Photo: Frances Anderson, courtesy of Palestine Museum US

That commitment has become ever more urgent. In the wake of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and a relentless campaign of forced displacement and settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, the lines between humanitarian crisis, cultural erasure and political suppression have blurred. Yet cultural and academic institutions in Europe and the United States often remain silent—or actively suppress Palestinian voices.

A case in point occurred just last month when Dr Karameh Kuemmerle, a Palestinian American physician and one of the founders of Doctors Against Genocide, was invited to speak at Quinnipiac University about the medical realities unfolding in Gaza. But the university’s administration abruptly cancelled her talk, deeming the subject ‘too political’.

The Palestine Museum stepped in. Dr Kuemmerle delivered her talk at the museum instead to a packed audience, with the entire event now available on the museum’s YouTube channel.

This was more than a relocation, it was a statement. The museum is making room for Palestinian voices, no matter how uncomfortable it might be for some.

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This ethos continues in Edinburgh. The European branch, located in a city known for its literary and artistic ferment, aims to be a living archive and cultural hub, one that will spotlight not only visual artists, but also filmmakers, musicians, scholars and activists.

When renowned orthopaedic surgeon and founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians Dr. Swee Ang had her speaking engagement cancelled recently in another UK city due to “controversy”, the museum’s Edinburgh branch offered her an alternative venue.

Already, there are plans for a series of public talks, exhibitions and collaborations. But more than that, the Edinburgh branch represents a widening of the museum’s mission—to insist that Palestine is not a marginal topic, but a central one, and that its people have a right not only to exist, but to create, document and speak freely.

Former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf at the Palestine Museum Scotland. Photo: FB/Humza Yousaf

At a moment when Palestinian artists are being de-platformed, exhibitions cancelled and public figures muzzled, the museum’s growing presence is an act of cultural resistance and a reclamation of narrative space. With plans already underway for branches in London, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Norway, Faisal’s vision is a network of unapologetic spaces where Palestinian identity can flourish beyond the smokescreens of politics and censorship.

“I will not rest until there is a Palestine Museum in every major city around the world,” Saleh told MEMO. “Because the erasure of a people begins with silencing their story. And we will not let that happen.”