Abu Dhabi’s The National reports on Jack Persekian’s sudden dismissal from the Sharjah Biennial over an unnamed artwork that provoked the Emirate’s ruling Sheikh to fire him:

Mr Persekian, speaking from his home city of Jerusalem, said he learned of his dismissal in a phone call at noon from a colleague at the Sharjah Art Foundation, which runs the Biennial.

“It was very, very abrupt,” he said. “It completely knocked me over. It was the result of people objecting to the content of one artwork.

“It was foolish of me, I had not looked at it carefully because I couldn’t, there were so many works and so many things to produce – films and books and publications and videos, a million things I didn’t go through. I’m not in the habit of checking everything, and people just didn’t like what they saw in that work and took it out on me personally.”

He declined to reveal which work had caused the row, saying only that it has now been removed from the show.

Sharjah Biennial Chief Sacked Over One Work (The National)