“This is a dream,” said the artist Manal Deeb, whose mixed-media works — incorporating photographs, oil paint and Arabic calligraphy — hang in the gallery. Her work was also exhibited at the United Nations Visitors Center in New York in 2012—2013. Born in Ramallah, Ms. Deeb moved to America as a teenager in 1986. Speaking by telephone from her studio in Fairfax, Va., she said the new Palestinian museum will provide her and other Palestinian artists with an outlet where there was none before.

“As Palestinians, we all have the same core search for identity, and this is a way for us to all come together and save that identity,” she said.

Mr. Saleh said that the museum’s agenda is neither political or religious, but few of the artists on display have avoided the historic and ongoing conflicts between Palestinians and the State of Israel. The impacts of war on women and children are a theme of Ms. Deeb’s art, as well as that of 47-year-old Rana Bishara, born in 1971 in the Upper Galilee village of Tarshiha where she still lives part time. Her paintings in the museum feature abstracts that explore memories of childhood growing up amid political demonstrations, contrasted with the beauty of the natural world. To this end, much of her work features actual pieces of cactus, a symbol of razed villages where nothing remains but the prickly vegetation.

“For me, cactus means to be patient,” said Ms. Bishara, speaking by telephone during a recent visit to Savannah, Ga., where she earned an M.F.A. at the Savannah College of Art in 2003. “One of my famous works has pieces of pickled cactus, packed tightly in a jar, which depicts Palestinians who are living in Israel under the pressure of laws that treat us like second-class citizens or worse,” Ms. Bishara said.