An announcement by Desert X that it will collaborate with Saudi Arabia for a large-scale art exhibition has raised both environmental and human rights concerns. The 2020 exhibition follows two Coachella Valley exhibitions in 2017 and 2019.

In partnership with the Royal Commission for AlUla, the major site-specific exhibition will take place in the desert of AlUla in northwest Saudi Arabia, which is home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Hegra (Mada'in Saleh).

Los Angeles-based contemporary artist Ed Ruscha said the collaboration with a Saudi Arabian government initiative led him to resign from Desert X's board, given the country's human rights record and reported involvement in the killing of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Ruscha said accepting funds to bring Desert X to northwest Saudi Arabia risks sending the wrong message and is “like inviting Hitler to a tea party.”

“I think Desert X just dropped something really foul in its own punch bowl. With recent events, Saudi Arabia is in urgent need of legitimacy and we couldn’t have picked a more toxic partner,” Ruscha said in an interview with The Desert Sun. “I just felt like this is too toxic of an issue and it’s just the wrong time to do it. Our desert’s just as hot and dry as theirs, so why do we need them?”

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While the Los Angeles Times reported that three Desert X board members, including Ruscha, art historian Yael Lipschutz and stylist Tristan Milanovich, resigned over the decision to do the exhibition, Desert X founder and board president Susan Davis called the characterization a "misstatement."

"None of them resigned and said this is what I'm resigning for," Davis said. "None of them put that in writing or spoke to me about it. None of them. I can't speak directly to that. But Yael (Lipschutz) has made it clear in the press and ... made it clear from the start she didn't like this project."*

Ruscha said he announced his resignation via email.

Lipschutz described the project as "completely unethical" to the Los Angeles Times, citing a record of genocide and discrimination by the national government.

Saudi Arabia has faced condemnation from international organizations including the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in recent years for alleged human rights violations and war crimes in Yemen.

The Yemeni civil war has raged since 2016 and pits the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that controls much of western Yemen against a Saudi-led coalition, which is backed by the United States. The coalition carries out airstrikes and has periodically enforced blockades on the country’s ports to prevent food, fuel and medicine from entering.

The United Nations estimates 20 million people in Yemen — totaling more than two-thirds of the population — lack reliable access to food. There have been more than 1.2 million reported cases of cholera since the current conflict began.

Based on images and videos posted to social media throughout the conflict, Saudi Arabia also has appeared to have used the chemical weapon white phosphorus near civilian populations, in violation of international law.

Dr. Peter Bartu, a lecturer at UC Berkeley who previously worked as a UN mediator in the Middle East, said for the past three or four years, experts have referred to Yemen as “the worst man-made humanitarian crisis in the world” due to UN reports that have repeatedly alleged crimes against humanity including double-tap strikes, where bombers return to their targets after first responders arrive to tend to the wounded.

Criticism intensified last year after Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was killed and dismembered in the Saudi consulate office in Istanbul, Turkey after Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman reportedly ordered his assassination.

When asked about the recent death of Khashoggi, Davis said "it was a year ago."

"I don't know that the country isn't peaceful," Davis said. "No country is a homogenous entity, and we're dealing with individuals. It's the reason that the artists from the get-go were interested in starting this cultural dialogue with a so-called international language.

" ...We took a very careful, measured approach to making this decision. It started with conversations with individual artists who participated in Desert X and virtually all of them that I know of ... thought this was an important move to make."

When asked about the environmental impact of art works on the archaeological site Hegra, which dates back thousands of years to the Lihyan and Nabataean kingdoms, Davis said the Royal Commission has an environmental sustainability program in place to address the environmental impact of the event.

"They're intending to build a tourist destination. ... They've gone through all sorts of architectural site plans," Davis said of the commission, which is installing and producing the show.

Desert X AIUla is part of Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, a blueprint devised by Bin Salman to socially and economically transform the oil-reliant kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s actions in Yemen have little to do with Bin Salman’s economic development efforts, but Bartu said, along with Khashoggi’s death, they’ve caused some investors to question entering into potential partnerships with Saudi Arabia.

“You can imagine how cultural institutions in Saudi Arabia feel isolated and if they can get part of this American thing, Desert X, they can expand their involvement in the world and become ‘good’ again. I just think it’s the wrong time for that,” Ruscha said.

Bartu called the humanitarian crisis “grave” and said it shows few signs of subsiding as, less than a month ago, the Iran-aligned Houthis claimed responsibility for airstrikes that escalated tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran, leading many to fear an all-out regional war could be imminent.

“People are talking about a 1914 moment in the Middle East,” Bartu said, referencing the year World War I began, “where, if there’s one misguided missile or counterstrike, we’ll end up with a major conflagration in the region.”

Sam Metz covers politics. Reach him at samuel.metz@desertsun.com or on Twitter @metzsam. Brian Blueskye covers arts and entertainment. He can be reached at brian.blueskye@desertsun.com or (760) 778-4617.

*Editor's note: This story has been updated to include expanded quotes from Susan Davis.