At 60, the Israel Museum offers a new take on its accumulated treasures

Accumulating works of art and craft over such a long period of time, if executed studiously and with due consideration of the contemporary cultural and commercial climes, means you are going to end up with a plethora of gems that have to bide their time before finding their way out of the vaults and into the light of day in the museum’s display spaces. That is largely down to simple logistics, but timing the rollout to an appropriate juncture also comes into the curatorial and directorial equation.

That, indeed, sounds like a taxing assignment, but it can help to feed off current affairs and the zeitgeist as a contextual framework.

The subtext to the exhibition title should be easily comprehensible to anyone who has been living in this country for more than, say, a decade. Considering the dizzying pace at which political affairs here unfold, perhaps that temporal allotment is more than a little on the generous side. Sadly, as we are only too aware, there is barely a dull moment in this part of the world, as we lurch from one drama to another and try to lead some semblance of a normal life betwixt cataclysmic episodes.

“Between war and its absence, existential fear reawakening past traumas, and the normal routines of a healthy society, life in Israel recalls the swinging of a pendulum, moving between opposite poles,” Mendelsohn observes in his program notes.

If we accept the maxim that artists feed off their own lives, and events and the ambiance in their milieu, it follows that the curator’s assertion that “this pendulum motion is also apparent in the art created here from the early 20th century to this day” is a given.

In truth, the museum’s curatorial folk have shuffled the storeroom pack before.

The first occasion was in 2010 when the institution underwent a significant refurbishment and expansion makeover. Artworks that had been stashed away while the structural work was in progress, and items that had been kept under wraps for some time, were dusted down, recontextualized, and shown to the public.

However, Mendelsohn argues, the current undertaking is different. “This [exhibition] represents a change of thinking about how to present Israeli art. In 2010, the exhibition related to the full timeline of Israeli art but not in a chronological manner. This time, we did it chronologically.” But not just as a temporally sequential arrangement.

“We also addressed major topics. After October 7, we set up a wall with works that directly address that and the ensuing war.”

But it is not, he stresses, all doom and gloom. “This exhibition reflects what is going on now, including the good things, not just the war.”

Mendelsohn says the plan is to get the message out as far and wide as possible, using any pertinent means at his disposal.

“We have gallery talks scheduled, music and dance. This is an important point in the museum’s history, the renewal of our permanent collection. This is a continuation of the process that started in 2010, through the change in 2015 [when the museum’s golden jubilee was marked with a slew of exhibitions].

Since then, there hasn’t been a change in the general setting. We are trying to forge offbeat interfaces,” he explains.

The works currently displayed across several spaces span a broad chronological, thematic, cultural, and stylistic spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, the show features contributions by some of the stalwarts of the local art continuum, such as Arie Aroch, Yitzhak Danziger, Nahum Gutman, Menashe Kadishman, and Yehezkel Streichman, charting major milestones of our cultural identity progression.

Coming up closer to the here and now, there is a diptych of scenes by 48-year-old, Ukrainian-born artist Zoya Cherkassky, from her country of birth and adopted homeland, with distressing, all-too familiar scenes of violence and socio-political angst. Take away the Russian and Hebrew letterings in the signs in the painting, and you can switch them around without missing a beat.

Increasingly in recent years, particularly since the COVID lockdowns, when the vast majority of us got our cultural kicks through the virtual channels of computer communication, museums have begun to consider ever more adventurous events and activities in an effort to keep the turnstiles ticking over.

Entertainment from a range of disciplines, such as live music, dance, and theater, as well as movie screenings, have been on museums’ marketing agendas for some time now. In the context of the art repositories’ mainstay field of venture, interactive exhibitions and other similar wares are designed to get consumers fully engaged and on board.

The Israel Museum’s anniversary programming has that box well and truly ticked with the Behind the Scenes – A Live Conservation Lab at the Israel Museum exhibition curated by Galit Bennett-Dahan and Sharon Tager, ably assisted by Yarin Spinko.

The title basically spills the ongoing earnest action beans. Not only does the Lab shine some light on the research, deft treatment, and elbow grease that go into ensuring timeworn, weather-beaten artifacts are up to par and presentable, but it also offers us opportunities to gain some insight into how the magic is executed by the in situ professionals.

The exhibition has, fittingly, been given a generous runout – through to May next year – and there will be daily 2 p.m. slots when we can get up close to the works as they undergo repairs, and ask the specialists about the ins and outs of their craft.

The Israel Museum’s Conservation Department, the country’s oldest and most varied, consists of six laboratories that handle the hundreds of thousands of items in the collection – archaeological finds, artworks, and ethnographic artifacts. Each lab specializes in different materials, such as wood, glass, stone, clay, paint, and various metals.

The exhibition has been in the works a while. “The idea first came up in 2018,” Bennett-Dahan notes.

She says it is a natural response to public demand. “As an artist and someone who engages with the public, I always noted that people were curious about what goes on beneath the [exhibition] surface of the artifacts.”

The curator and I share a backdrop in archaeology, and excavating terminology was soon pressed into illustrative service.

“You can scrape away at the layers covering an artifact, and then suddenly, for example, you might uncover a signature,” she says.

All the relevant parties were eager to get the conservation activity up and running, but then the pandemic furlough emerged, and that was that – until now. The exhibition came to be with some state support.

“People come to the museum and see works of art that look clean and polished. But they don’t know what went into bringing the works to that state. And you have to determine if an artifact is genuine,” she points out.

The exhibition incorporates an interactive station which simulates a conservator’s work desk. It features objects from the conservator’s workspace, as well as various materials and tools used in conservation. The display also includes containers with pigments used in the restorative process, as well as information about the objects, tools, and their functions, which visitors can access via a touch screen located on the desk, and later also on their smartphones via a QR code.

Visitors can apply some of that knowledge to other parts of the museum, as the pigment data reference exhibits on display elsewhere in the museum.

All in all, not a bad way to celebrate a 60th anniversary.