New Exhibitions

• Bizarre Perfection
  
• Many Faces: Masks from Many Times and Many Places
  
• “I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes”: Prayer in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
  
• Arie Aroch: Works from the Israel Museum
  
• Ticho House
  
  
  Bizarre Perfection

December 20, 2008 – June 13, 2009

Curators: Suzanne Landau, Yulla and Jacques Lipchitz Chief Curator of the Arts and Landeau Family Curator of Contemporary Art Associate Curator: Tanya Sirakovich, Stella Fischbach Department of Modern Art

English/Hebrew catalogue

Weinstein Gallery,Ruth Youth Wing

The exhibition and catalogue were made possible by the Jack N. and Lilyan Mandel Fund; The Joseph C. and Florence Mandel Fund; The Morton L. and Barbara Mandel Fund; and the donors to the Israel Museum’s 2008 Exhibition Fund: Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond J. Learsy, Aspen, Colorado; Ruth and Leon Davidoff, Paris and Mexico City; Hanno D. Mott, New York; The Nash Family Foundation, New York.

This stunning exhibition presents treasures from the Museum’s collections together with key loans of contemporary works by Tara Donovan, Liza Lou, Ron Mueck, and Do-Ho Su, celebrating the exquisite craftsmanship, skill, and dexterity involved in creating uniquely labor-intensive works of painstaking artisanship, leading either to great art or great craft. Works in the exhibition have inspired amazement and even disbelief, demonstrating that even in an age of technological advancement and space-age materials, viewers can still be enthralled by handmade creativity. Spanning a broad range of cultures over more than 3,000 years, and crossing the traditional boundaries between art and craft, the works in Bizarre Perfection display extraordinary attention to detail and method, yielding strangely perfect results.

Installation view

Ron Mueck, Two Women, 2005. Collection
Glenn Fuhrman, New York, courtesy The FLAG Art
Foundation

Many Faces: Masks from Many Times and Many Places

April 8 – August 31, 2009

Guest curator: Efrat Natan

Beningson Gallery, Ruth Youth Wing The exhibition was made possible by the Palm Beach Friends; and the donors to the Israel Museum’s 2009 Exhibition Fund: Melva Bucksbaum and Raymond J. Learsy, Aspen, Colorado; Ruth and Leon Davidoff, Paris and Mexico City; Hanno D. Mott, New York; The Nash Family Foundation, New York. Enabling wearers to assume different identities, masks are an important element in both cultic traditions and in the world of the artist. Many of the masks displayed in this intriguing exhibition were used in ceremonial rituals in cultures across the globe and believed to possess magical properties. Some played a role in coming-of-age rites; others were used in ceremonies marking the change of seasons (most notably the birth of spring, the origin of today’s carnival celebrations) or in burial rituals. This interdisciplinary exhibition presents exquisite examples from the Museum’s broad holdings, covering 9,000 years from prehistoric archaeology to contemporary art, enhanced by photo documentation of masks in traditional use

             Installation views of the exhibition

“I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes”: Prayer in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

April 6 – August 31, 2009

Curators: Adolfo Roitman, Head of the Shrine of the Book and Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls; Michal Dayagi-Mendels, Tamar and Teddy Kollek Chief Curator of
Archaeology; Galit Bennet Dahan, Associate Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls

Shrine of the Book

The exhibition was made possible by the donors to the Israel Museum’s 2009 Exhibition Fund.

Following the display of the Great Isaiah Scroll in the exhibition Swords into Plowshares, and the Temple Scroll in Reflections of the Temple, the Museum continues a program of installations in the Shrine of the Book, showcasing singular objects of archaeological and historical importance to the heritage of prayer. I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes, the third in this series, is a display of special artifacts relating to forms of prayer in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Underlying the liturgy of the three great monotheistic faiths is the scriptural tradition by which prayer is addressed to a single, benevolent, all-powerful Creator who dwells in the heavens but is attentive to human needs. The artifacts on display, each revealing some aspect of Jewish, Christianand Muslim attitudes

Arie Aroch: Works from the Israel Museum

November 1 – December 13, 2008

Curator: Timna Seligman, Associate Curator, Ticho House

The Jerusalem Artists’ House

The exhibition was made possible by the donors to the Israel Museum’s 2008 Exhibition Fund.

Once again taking advantage of the schedule for our campus renewal to present works from our collections at historical sites beyond the Museum’s own campus, this exhibition, held at the Artists’ House in downtown Jerusalem, marked one hundred years since the birth of Arie Aroch. Presenting works from the Museum’s collection, as well as from the private holdings of the Aroch family on extended loan to the Museum, the exhibition celebrated an artist whose influence can still be felt on the local artistic landscape. Incorporating works from his early years in Paris to those created shortly before his death in 1974, the exhibition focused on the mediums in which Aroch excelled – oil on canvas; oil, pencil, and collage on wood and paper; painted reliefs; and oil stick on reproductions – following the development of a visual lexicon that has earned Aroch an honored place as one of the fathers of Israeli art.

A capacity crowd of 200 participants attended the closing event that included a gallery talk by curator Timna Seligman, and presentations by several leading contemporary Israeli artists, including Ido Bar-El, Yehoshua Borchovsky, Yair Garbuz, David Ginton, Naomi Siman-Tov, and Nahum Tevet, each of whom spoke about the influence of Aroch in their own work.

Arie Aroch, Boat, 1968. Extended loan from the Aroch family, Tel Aviv

Arie Aroch, Red Square, 1964. Gift of Barry and Frances Ivker, New Orleans, to American Friends of the Israel Museum, in honor of Bertha Urdang on her 70th birthday

Ticho House

Woman with a Camera: Liselotte Grschebina,
Germany 1908 – Israel 1994

October 15, 2008 – February 6, 2009

Curator: Yudit Caplan, Associate Curator, Noel and Harriette Levine Department
of Photography

Hebrew/English/German catalogue

The exhibition and catalogue were made possible by the German Friends of the Israel Museum. Liselotte Grschebina’s photographs were gifted to the Israel Museum by her son, Beni Gjebin, and his wife Rina, Shoham, Israel, with the assistance of Rachel and Dov Gottesman, Tel Aviv and London.

German-born Liselotte Grschebina was an avant-garde photographer in Karlsruhe whose work exemplified the energizing spirit of cultural innovation at the time of the Weimar Republic. Immigrating to Palestine in 1934, Grschebina opened a studio in Tel Aviv where she established a reputation for this new genre of photography. A modest photographer, her talent developed without major recognition until after her death, when a collection of her works was discovered in a hidden storage niche in her son’s apartment. In 2000, he gifted the entire archive – including some 1,800 gelatin prints – to the Museum’s Department of Photography. The exhibition showcased Grschebina’s distinctive and impressive body of work, also shedding light on the phenomenon of émigré avant-garde artists who arrived in Palestine following the rise of Nazism in Germany. This was the first time that a retrospective of any kind had been assembled of Grschebina’s impressive oeuvre, and the exhibition included some one hundred of her photographs, taken in Germany and in Palestine and dating from 1929 to the 1960s, notable for their synthesis of Weimar aesthetic with the oriental subject matter that Grschebina found upon her arrival in the Middle East.

iselotte Grschebina, Light Athletics, 1930

Installation views

Paperworks

March 1 – June 5, 2009

Curator: Ronit Sorek, Associate Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings

Hebrew/English booklet

The exhibition was made possible by the donors to the Israel Museum’s 2009 Exhibition Fund.

In this exhibition, paper – usually the neutral support for drawing, printing, and drafting – becomes a dynamic force in its own right, with a direct and immediate impact on the resulting artwork. Israeli artists showcased here, including Hilla Ben Ari, Yifat Bezalel, Jan Tichy, Maya Zack, and Shaul Zemach, use paper to build, fold, cut, and crease, some creating worlds of fantasy with a powerful presence, others creating works that reflect their attitude toward nature, locality, childhood, and inner lives. The works displayed also reflect a familiarity with and awareness of Ticho House’s history and heritage and its unique spaces and holdings.

        

Hilla Ben Ari, Mating Flight, 2008 (detail).

Collection of the artist Jan Tichy, installation no. 6 (tubes), 2009 (detail). Collection of the artist