A bucolic Connecticut town may have outwardly little in common with the Middle East, but it's home to a new art museum hoping to change US attitudes toward the Palestinians. Tucked away in Woodbridge, an affluent community near Yale University 80 miles (128 kilometers) north of Manhattan, it is well off the museum circuit and the bright lights of a big city, at least for now.
The achievement is that it exists at all, funded on a shoe-string budget of half-a-million dollars, and nine months in the making by its Palestinian-American businessman founder, determined to create the first museum dedicated to Palestinian art in the United States. Israel's imminent 70th anniversary, the prospective US embassy move to Jerusalem, Washington's close relationship with the Jewish state, past suicide bombings and headlines about stabbing attacks overshadow much of the US discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"The media and the forces that are not friendly to Palestine have painted the Palestinians in a very negative light and in some ways they were dehumanized," museum founder Faisal Saleh, 66, told AFP.
His hope is for everyday Americans to visit and discover that the Palestinians have a rich artistic heritage. "We have our own artists, just like everyone else has their own artists, and we have a disproportionate number," he said. "A lot of them are working under very austere conditions."
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