[an ageing] administration [is] feckless in its attempts to build an effective government, but a new generation has not risen to replace it.

BIRZEIT, West Bank — When the $24 million Palestinian Museum celebrates its opening on Wednesday, it will have almost everything: a stunning, contemporary new building; soaring ambitions as a space to celebrate and redefine Palestinian art, history and culture; an outdoor amphitheater; a terraced garden.

One thing the museum will not have is exhibitions.

A curator preparing the main exhibition hall of the Palestinian Museum last week. An exhibit highlighting artifacts of Palestinian refugees was scheduled to be shown at the opening, but has been suspended.
A curator preparing the main exhibition hall of the Palestinian Museum last week. An exhibit highlighting artifacts of Palestinian refugees was scheduled to be shown at the opening, but has been suspended. - Mr. Persekian, who runs an art gallery called the Al Mamal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem, said he had agreed to leave after the museum’s senior management unceremoniously told him that it no longer favored the project, but he said he did not know why. “I can’t fathom what happened,” he said, offering a succinct description of the result of his work for the museum: “Waste.” Mr. Qattan, the museum chairman, said that his team had decided that Mr. Persekian had not sufficiently built expertise among staff members during his tenure of three and a half years, and that outside artists had criticized his conception of the exhibition. “We didn’t feel that what was delivered was up to scratch,” Mr. Qattan said. Although there are a number of what Mr. Bahour called “niche museums” in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Museum would be the largest institution of its kind. © Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

The long-planned — and much-promoted — inaugural show, “Never Part,” highlighting artifacts of Palestinian refugees, has been suspended after a disagreement between the museum’s board and its director, which led to the director’s ouster. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and other dignitaries are expected to attend the opening ceremony, but a spokeswoman acknowledged on Sunday that “there will not be any artwork exhibited in the museum at all.”

Omar al-Qattan, the museum’s chairman, said Palestinians were “so in need of positive energy” that it was worthwhile to open even an empty building. “Symbolically it’s critical,” he said, conceding that the next phase, including the exhibitions, “is the more exciting one.”

In the West Bank, where Palestinians have for years struggled to build political and civic institutions while resisting Israel’s occupation of the territory, the fate of the exhibition may say as much about the realities of Palestinian society as any art collection could. Since the signing of the Oslo peace accords with Israel in the mid-1990s, Palestinian cultural and social initiatives have often failed to gain traction and find consistent leadership.

Mustafa Bargouthi, head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a nonprofit organization, said that the list of institutions struggling under occupation and other difficulties is lengthy. Among the groups that have suffered, Mr. Bargouthi said, are the Palestine National Orchestra, the Popular Art Center in Ramallah, dance groups across the West Bank, and road, agricultural and medical projects.

Many Palestinian activists see the aging Mr. Abbas, 81, and his administration as increasingly feckless in their attempts to build an effective government, but a new generation has not risen to replace them.

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