Temporary Exhibitions

MARC CHAGALL, SELECTED ETCHINGS FROM THE SERIES “DEAD SOULS”, ILLUSTRATING NIKOLAI GOGOL’S EPIC POEM, 1923-1927
CABINET SECRETS: PRINTS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS Location Foyer near Graphics Study Room MARC CHAGALL, SELECTED ETCHINGS FROM THE SERIES “DEAD SOULS”, ILLUSTRATING NIKOLAI GOGOL’S EPIC POEM, 1923-1927 Curator Alisa Padovano-Friedman From 18 January 2010 Grotesque, exaggerated figures that are more than slightly critical of 19th century Russian society, with its characteristic corruption and bureaucracy.
ARAM GERSHUNI: RECENT PAINTINGS
ARAM GERSHUNI: RECENT PAINTINGS Through Feb. 20, 2010 Location Jeannette Assia Gallery Curator Prof. Mordechai Omer Catalogue Loyalty to the visual experience and the impulse to prevent it from slipping away are the moving force of Aram Gershuni’s artistic work. Keeping close to the motif that serves as his means – portrait, landscape, still life or any other image he happens upon – Gershuni holds on to the primal, fragile and almost-disappearing experience in order to try and restore its existence as a painting. “Painting”, he said in an interview with Dror Burstein, “is a lost gaze which I try to reclaim”. Although Aram Gershuni regards the painting’s impersonal as an indispensable value, he dares to enter, especially in portraits, into powerful, emotionally charged fields that penetrate the most intimate autobiography of the family cell: his father, mother, wife, children. In the portraits, and most surprisingly in his dealings with landscapes or still life, the motifs themselves minimize their presence, and in return a rich, experience-laden world unfolds before the viewers, a world detached from the model and focused on the painting’s plastic values. Aram Gershuni’s painterly values are well-anchored in the medium’s rich and long-standing traditions, with an almost physical link to works of masters such as Antonello da Massina and Ingres, or more contemporary artists such as the American Lennart Anderson (Israel Hershberg’s teacher) or the English Euan Uglow. Aram Gershuni is a graduate of the Jerusalem Studio School founded by Israel Hershberg, and today teachers at the Tahana School of Drawing and Painting in Tel Aviv, which he founded in 2005. GALLERRY TALK 12.1, 20.00
YEHUDA ASSIA COLLECTION: A SELECTION
YEHUDA ASSIA COLLECTION: A SELECTION Through February 13, 2010 Location Sam and Ayala Zacks Pavilion Guest Curator Carmela Rubin Catalogue The Yehuda Assia Collection, a selection of which is exhibited, is one of the interesting, rooted collections of Israeli art in the country. The collection focuses mostly on figurative art – paintings by Mordecai Ardon, Abel Pann, Reuven Rubin, Moshe Mokady, Yosl Bergner, Liliane Klapisch and Avigdor Arikha. Ardon and Abel Pann especially radiate on the collection’s nature – not only in quantity but also due to the affinity of significant parts of it to Bible stories, despite the prominent stylistic differences between these two artists. The biblical affinity was of constitutive significance to the generation of the sons of “two homelands” (a term coined by poet Leah Goldberg), artists for whom the Bible held the memory of Israel as homeland even before they reached it. One cannot overestimate the significance of this emotional context, from which their personal identity was also derived. This is the common denominator between the artists represented in the collection and the collector Yehuda Assia, as well as the source of the collection’s uniqueness. GALLERY TALKS (HEBREW) 21.1 20.00 4.2 20:00
ZADOK BEN DAVID: HUMAN NATURE
ZADOK BEN DAVID: HUMAN NATURE Through february 27, 2010 Location Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Pavilion; Markus B. Mizne Gallery, Gabrielle Rich Wing Curator Irith Hadar Catalogue The exhibition, extending over two halls, presents single sculptures and a sculpture installation – a selection of recent works by sculptor Zadok Ben David (born and immigrated to Israel in 1949, lives in London). The sculptures are steel cutouts of figures whose bodies are an image of boughs and foliage, or of trees whose foliage is a silhouette of human activity; sculptures that are isolated, enclosed, anonymous presences, each standing alone in space. The installation is a wide field of sand planted with 20,000 cutouts of defined, specified flowers, and its appearance transforms and astounds throughout the viewing. Crossbreeding images of nature with descriptions of the human body, and relying on the angle of vision, are both the common denominator and the code of this cohesive group of works which is a further chapter – or an intermediate summary – of the sequence of Ben David’s work in creating ironic parallels to our various modes of perception. Exhibition and catalogue sponsored by Isracard; Michael and Felicia Crystal; Wendy Fisher; Sara Lahat; Doron and Marian Livnat; and Michael and Phyllis Rapp Zadok Ben David, Here I Am, 2006 GALLERY TALKS (HEBREW) 22.12 20:00 19.1, 20.00 16.2, 20.00 ENCOUNTER WITH THE ARTIST 25.2 20.00
FAMILY/TREE II NEW ACQUISITIONS DONATED BY THE RIVKA SAKER AND UZI ZUCKER FUND FOR ISRAELI CONTEMPORARY ART
HELENA RUBINSTEIN PAVILION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART NEW EXHIBITION FAMILY/TREE II NEW ACQUISITIONS DONATED BY THE RIVKA SAKER AND UZI ZUCKER FUND FOR ISRAELI CONTEMPORARY ART Opening Thursday, 7 January 2010, for Museum Members and Patrons Open to the general public from 8 January Curator Ellen Ginton Catalogue Thirteen artists, six women and seven men, participate in Part II of the exhibition Family/Tree, with paintings, sculptures and installations. The age gap between them is over forty years, and in this sense they represent several generations and different artistic approaches in Israeli art. However, the works are all from a limited period – the past decade, from 2000 onwards, except for one work dated 1996. As expected, there is similarity in the works, derived from the historical and artistic periods alike: a note of pessimism and elegy. Not only do some of the works carry clear images of death, end, decline and violence, but expressions of death, calamity and terrorism also recur in the texts written about them – independently, by various writers. Nurit David’s work is a replica of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “The Triumph of Death” (1562), which inadvertently seems to represent the whole collection. Artists in the exhibition: Moshe Gershuni, Raffi Lavie, Yudith Levin, Gabriel Klasmer, Nurit David, Yitzhak Livneh, Diti Almog, Gil Shachar, Eliezer Sonnenschein, Sigalit Landau, Daniel Silver, Angela Klein, Jan Tichy, Netally Schlosser. GALLERY TALKS FAMILY/TREE II (HEBREW) 19.1 20:00 11.2 20:00
JORAM ROZOV: LANDSCAPES AND MILESTONES
JORAM ROZOV: LANDSCAPES AND MILESTONES Opening Thursday, 17 December 2009, for Museum Members and Patrons Open to the general public from 18 December Location Charles and Evelyn Kramer Galleries Curator Emanuela Calò Catalogue The exhibition presents works from two series-in-progess: “Landscapes”, begun in 1983, and “Milestones”, begun in 2003. The topics of Joram Rozov’s (born Hadera, 1938) works are rooted in the Eretz-Israel, Zionist ethos, and continue in the disintegration of the dream in the current reality. The illusionary, plastic realism and the richly textured, brightly colored volume are arranged in intricate baroque compositions. The multiplicity of pictorial detail bears a touch of melodrama and kitsch, in contrast to common taste. The specific pictorial segments are milestones in Rozov’s life: from his childhood among the Hadera citrus orchards, to his experience in the formative Israeli institutions: the labor settlement movement, the army, Bezalel, wars, as well as his travels around the world. His starting point is his daily environment, from which he expands to complex realities through symbolization or descriptions of landscapes that are distant (Africa, Tuscany) or charged (Hebron, sabra cacti). The process of erosion and disintegration of the Zionist dream is already manifest in the depictions of pilots, soldiers and wars in the early paintings, and further develops in depictions of cracks in walls and roadblocks. Concurrently, the artist’s search for something different, hidden, wider, is evident. Exhibition and catalogue sponsored by Teva GALLERY TALK (HEBREW) 29.12 20:00
PERPETUAL MOVEMENT WITH ALEXANDER CALDER
PERPETUAL MOVEMENT WITH ALEXANDER CALDER FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY (ACTIVITIES FOLLOWING CALDER) Location Haft Hall, lower level Curator Sara Raiman Shor Exhibition and activities based on the works of American artist Alexander Calder (1898-1976). Humor, playfulness and movement are expressed in the works, which verge between painting and sculpture, between line and mass, between bi- and tri-dimensionality, between the figurative and the abstract. The mobiles moving in the wind, the stabiles that create an illusion of movement, and the circus games Calder made, all become an inspiration for activities: building mobiles and stabiles, making figures with lines and filament, activating the body in imitation of the sculptures’ balance, games according to the artist’s circus figures. For children this is a fascinating activity; for the parents – quality time with their children. See also “Morning Adventure” in the Children Section. The exhibition was made possible courtesy of the British Friends of the Art Museums of Israel and the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art
MATTERS OF THE HEART: FROM THE AZRIELI COLLECTION
MATTERS OF THE HEART: FROM THE AZRIELI COLLECTION Opening Monday, 21 December 2009, for Museum Members and Patrons Open to the general public from 22 December Location Simon and Marie Jaglom Pavilion Curator Ziva Koort Catalogue The collection includes figurative works by 20th century Israeli artists as well as works by late 19th century Jewish artists. Israeli modernism as well as Diaspora Jews, local landscapes as well as synagogues. Among the artists: Avigdor Arikha, Eldar Farber, Aharon Halevi, Michael Kovner, Meir Pichadze, Mordecai Ardon, Nahum Gutman, Moshe Castel, Ofer Lellouche, Reuven Rubin, Mauricio Minkowski, Abel Pann, Yohanan Simon, Yosl Bergner. The works in the collection touch upon David Azrieli the collector – his existence as a Zionist; his past as a refugee; family man, lover of music, literature and nature. Sponsored by the Azrieli Group GALLERY TALK (HEBREW) 28.1, 20.00 18.2, 20.00 23.2, 20.00
MEISSEN PORCELAIN
HELENA RUBINSTEIN PAVILION FOR CONTEMPORARY ART NEW EXHIBITIONS MEISSEN PORCELAIN Location The Danek and Jadzia Gertner Galleries CuratorDr. Doron J. Lurie Catalogue picture:Rape of Europe, ca. 1800, Meissen One of the synonyms for porcelain is the word china (from China, the country), which denotes the material’s historical origin. Meissen porcelain is considered one of the high-quality porcelains in the European porcelain industry (other porcelain factories are Rosenthal of Austria, Vienna Porcelain, Delft porcelain in the Netherlands, Sèvres in France, Capodimonte in Naples, and more). Following continuous attempts, chemists who worked at the service of Emperor Augustus II of Saxony succeeded in producing porcelain that was similar to the renowned Chinese porcelain. A factory was founded in Meissen, near Dresden, which employed potters, goldsmiths, painters, designers, enamel and glass artists; it flourished throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. Meissen factories produced various figures (in the semblance of members of the nobility, peasants, animals, and so forth) in various scenes taken from everyday life, from Greek mythology, allegories, as well as functional decorative items (candelabras, tableware, clocks, etc.). Some of these were white, while others were painted in splendid colors. The exhibition features about forty items, most of them Meissen products, on loan from Danek and Jadzia Gertner, Vienna.