The Israel Museum Shows Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art

Written by Alfred Coningsby Thursday, 19 April 2012 22:06

Jerusalem.- The Israel Museum is pleased to present a selection of 18 recent acquisitions and gifts of international and Israeli contemporary art, on display for the first time at the Museum. "Magic Lantern: Recent Acquisitions in Contemporary Art" brings together works in a range of mediums by an international cadre of artists, including Vahram Aghasyan, Ilit Azoulay, Luis Camnitzer, Isaac Julien, Jonathan Monk, Adrian Paci, Anila Rubiku, Yehudit Sasportas, Hiraki Sawa, Jan Tichy and Maya Zak, among others, all of which explore the theme of enchantment. The exhibition is on view through April 30, 2012. Whether in landscapes or interior scenes, the works in Magic Lantern invoke the world of legend, daydream, fantasy and illusion. Through imaginary journeys, blurred silhouettes in the mist, flickering flames and dark forest shadows, the real world assumes the diffuse contours of something magical.

The exhibition features works in a range of mediums, including installation, photography, video and film. Some of the exhibition highlights include; Vahram Aghasyan's photographic series "Ghost City" (2005–2007), showing the actual state of a utopian urban development — a housing project planned in Armenia by the Soviet regime but left unfinished when the USSR collapsed, and now overtaken by seemingly apocalyptic floodwaters. In his photography, Aghasyan investigates sites and structures that originated during the Soviet era but are non-functional, incomplete or irrelevant in their current socio-political environment. Ilit Azoulay's "Tree for Too One, The Keys, Window" (2010), a work composed of thousands of photographs of a variety of objects and people, taken from several angles and then pieced together. Shapes and sizes are reworked digitally and recast as a single image, creating a new photographic reality in which multiple layers of being, memory and association exist simultaneously in one coherent whole.


Jonathan Monk's "Candle Film" (2009), made up of eight 16 mm films of a candle filmed as it changes slowly over time. The 16 mm film and film projector require that the reels be changed on a regular basis—approximately once every hour—by a technician. Maya Zack's "Living Room" (2009), which recreates the interior of an apartment in Berlin just before it was abandoned in 1938 by means of computer visualization. Based on the artist's interview with Yair Noam and his description of his childhood home, the work addresses such questions as the limitations of memory, the imagination of the artist, and the impossibility of recapturing what has been lost.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem was founded in 1965 as Israel's national museum. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, near the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was the driving spirit behind the establishment of the museum, one of the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. The Museum has extensive collections of biblical archaeology, Judaica, ethnography, fine art, artifacts from Africa, North and South America, Oceania and the Far East, rare manuscripts, ancient glass and sculpture. A uniquely designed building on the grounds of the museum, the Shrine of the Book, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and artifacts discovered at Masada. The museum's holding include 500,000 objects with some 7,000 objects and works currently online. The director of the museum is James S. Snyder, former Deputy Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who was appointed in 1997. Mr. Snyder oversaw a 100 million dollar campaign to renovate the museum and double the gallery space. The renewed museum opened on July 26 2010. The museum covers nearly 50,000 sq. meters. It attracts 800,000 visitors a year including 100,000 children to its Youth Wing. The Samuel Bronfman Biblical and Archaeological Museum, which is a part of the museum complex, contains various archaeological finds. It has the largest collection of artifacts from Israel in the world.


The Shrine of the Book houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered 1947–56 in 11 caves in and around the Wadi Qumran. An elaborate planning process of seven years led to the building's eventual construction in 1965 which was funded by the family of David Samuel Gottesman, the Hungarian émigré, the philanthropist who had purchased the scrolls as a gift to the State of Israel. The shrine is built as a white dome, covering a structure placed two-thirds below the ground. The dome is reflected in a pool of water that surrounds it. Across from the white dome is a black basalt wall. The colors and shapes of the building are based on the imagery of the Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, whereas the white dome symbolizes the Sons of Light and the black wall symbolizes the Sons of Darkness. The interior of the shrine was designed to depict the environment in which the scrolls were found. There is also a permanent display on life in the Qumran, where the scrolls were written. The entire structure was designed to resemble a pot in which the scrolls were found. It was designed by Austrian architect Fredrick Kiesler and opened in 1965. As the fragility of the scrolls makes it impossible to display all on a continuous basis, a system of rotation is used. After a scroll has been exhibited for 3–6 months, it is removed from its showcase and placed temporarily in a special storeroom, where it "rests" from exposure. The museum also holds other rare ancient manuscripts and displays The Aleppo Codex, which is from the 10th-century and is believed to be the oldest complete Bible in Hebrew.The Israel Museum holds a large collection of paintings representing a wide range of periods, styles, subjects and regions of origin. Painters in the collection include such international figures as Rembrandt, Marc Chagall and Camille Pissarro as well as such Israeli and Jewish artists as Abel Pann. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.english.imjnet.org.il/htmls/home.aspx

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