Phil Buehler’s Wall of Tears installation, featuring the names of 18,457 children killed in Gaza between October 7, 2023, and July 19, 2025, has been refused display by a local council in the Australian state of New South Wales, reports the Guardian. The installation was meant to be exhibited at the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery in Nowra on Tuesday and was organized by Shoalhaven Friends of Palestine.
The council told the organizers to look into hiring “armed guards” in case “community conflict” arises. “We were like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ but we still wrote back to them and said we would meet all the requirements you want. We didn’t even know where we could get armed guards, or if you could get them,” said Annette Pham, a member of the group, adding that they were advised not to advertise the event and were told to reduce the exhibition’s run from eight days to three.
In an email correspondence, it shows New South Wales chief executive Andrew Constance opposing the event and citing staff safety concerns. Pham wrote to the council saying that the “very suggestion that armed guards might be necessary for an exhibition commemorating dead children is deeply disturbing. We are organizing a memorial art exhibition, not an event for which Council has disclosed any specific credible threat of violence requiring consideration of armed protection and metal screening.”
In response, a council spokesperson issued a statement saying that “the installation was deemed to present an unacceptable level of risk to gallery staff, visitors and tenants of the building.”
Buehler’s mural was exhibited in September in front of Parliament House in Canberra, the country’s capital city. The installation was first publicly shown in New York on January 29, coinciding with the second anniversary of the death of Hind Rajab.
Instead, Buehler’s installation will now be shown at the Berry Uniting Church, beginning Thursday. “If people would just look at that, how can that be dangerous? The danger is put on by other people who are trying to turn it into something it’s not,” said Buehler, whose artwork has toured Adelaide and Perth in Australia.
