Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice

Innocent Knowledge: Israeli and Palestinian Children’s Drawings

Exhibition on view January 21 through February 20, 2026.
Curated by Canaan Estes, Taher Vahanvaty, and Katharina Galor, Innocent Knowledge gathers digital images of children’s drawings from fifteen communities across Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. The nearly four hundred drawings offer a rare and intimate glimpse into how young people experience a deeply fractured and unequal landscape.

a child's drawing of five people holding hands with dark marks surrounding themInnocent Knowledge gathers digital images of children’s drawings created between October 2024 and June 2025 in fifteen communities across Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Nearly four hundred drawings—made in classrooms, kitchens, makeshift studios, open courtyards, and emergency tents—offer a rare and intimate glimpse into how young people experience a deeply fractured and unequal landscape.

Local educators, artists, and therapists extended a simple invitation: “Draw anything—especially family, home, or something from the past year.” Children responded with images both tender and harrowing: playgrounds beside tanks, demolished houses beneath yellow suns, flowers blooming next to tanks. Each drawing speaks from a world marked by violence, rupture, and displacement—but also by memory, endurance, and the instinct to make meaning.

The drawings shown here do not speak for every child or every community. But they offer something just as vital: a shared archive of witness and imagination, created by children who rarely cross borders in life, but whose images can’t help but do so.

Curated by Canaan Estes, Taher Vahanvaty, and Katharina Galor.

About the Exhibition

This exhibition includes sixty-two drawings selected from a total of three hundred ninety-three created across the participating communities. The works are grouped according to six recurring visual and conceptual categories from across the collection: Family and Home, Innocence and Knowledge, Violence and Loss, Hope and Resilience, Identity and Belonging, Butterflies and Dreams. These categories were developed for curatorial purposes only. They provide an organizing framework for display and do not imply interpretation, judgment, or analysis of individual drawings.

Rather than organizing the material by national, ethnic, or religious background, the curatorial approach brings together drawings from different communities within each category. This structure reflects visual affinities that become apparent across the material without attributing meaning or intent to the children who produced it.

View the project website

Plan Your Visit

On view January 21–February 20, 2026

The gallery is open Monday–Friday, 10 am–3 pm.
Closed 12 noon–1pm for lunch.
Closed for school and federal holidays

Visit our gallery at 94 Waterman Street, Providence, RI 02906.

Events

Innocent Knowledge Exhibition Opening Reception and Concert
Sunday, January 25, 2026, 2–4pm

After the Silence: Children, War, and Witnessing in Israel-Palestine
Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 6–7:30pm
Featuring panelists Katharina Galor, Omer Bartov, and Orwa Switat
Chaired by Simmons Center Director Anthony Bogues

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