The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2015 with a year-long series of special exhibitions reflecting on the Museum's achievements since its founding and underscoring the local and universal dimensions of its collections and programming.

From exhibitions uniting seminal works from across the Museum's encyclopedic holdings, to displays showcasing masterworks on loan from sister institutions, the Museum's anniversary year features the shared narratives of cultures and civilizations worldwide. Special focus is given to the trajectory of Israel's own visual culture, from its roots in Europe more than 100 years ago, to the founding of the Museum in 1965, through the present day.

Major gifts across all of the Museum's collections that have been committed since the Museum's renewal in 2010 are also on view throughout the year, highlighting the breadth of support worldwide that has contributed to the ongoing growth of the Museum's encyclopedic holdings.

Starting the Museum's celebratory year are several solo exhibitions by contemporary Israeli artists working today - offering snapshots of Israel's visual creativity of the moment - coupled with an examination of Israel's visual culture at the time of the Museum's founding.

"6 Artists 6 Projects" (open through August 29, 2015) presents new works by some of today's leading contemporary artists in Israel, whose practice resonates in counterpoint with the aesthetic traditions that accompanied the opening of the Museum 50 years earlier. The exhibition recognizes six contemporary artists whose work reflects the diverse creativity of Israeli art today. Participating artists Uri Gershuni, Roi Kupper, Dana Levy, Tamir Lichtenberg, Ido Michaeli, and Gilad Ratman each presents recent projects in his or her own dedicated gallery in solo exhibitions at the Museum.

Embracing disciplines from photography to installation, their works resonate with the Museum's ongoing practice of providing a platform for the art of the "now". Curated by Mira Lapidot, Yulla and Jacques Lipchitz Chief Curator of the Fine Arts; Dr. Noam Gal, Horace and Grace Goldsmith Senior Curator of the Noel and Harriette Levine Department of Photography; Amitai Mendelsohn, Curator of the David Orgler Department of Israeli Art; Aya Miron, Associate Curator, David Orgler Department of Israeli Art.

Opening with a a classic Israeli-designed interior from the period, "1965 Today" (March 31 - August 29, 2015) focuses on the creative production of Israel's artists of the time, including artists whose works were shown in the new Israel Museum and elsewhere across Israel's emerging art scene in the mid-1960s. Iconic examples of contemporary art from Europe and the U.S. are referenced, as are dominant international movements that influenced Israeli art, among them post-World War II Abstraction and the emerging movements of Pop Art, Op Art, and Minimalism. "1965 Today" features works drawn from the Museum's holdings, together with important loans from collections worldwide. Curated by Mira Lapidot, Yulla and Jacques Lipchitz Chief Curator of the Fine Arts; Noga Eliash-Zalmanovich,  Associate Curator, Stella Fischbach Department of Modern Art;  and Aya Miron, Associate Curator, David Orgler Department of Israeli Art.

Opening in May as a centerpiece of the anniversary year is a focused exhibition that features twelve pivotal objects from across the Museum's collections that illustrate the history of human civilization from prehistoric times through the present day.

"A Brief History of Humankind" (May 1 - December 26, 2015): The rich and diverse holdings of the Israel Museum span a timeline of hundreds of thousands of years, from the dawn of human civilization to contemporary life. Among these objects are: examples of the first use of fire in a communal setting; the first tools used by man; the first examples of Homo Sapiens and Neanderthal life forms; the material depiction of gods and leaders; the earliest evidence of writing and numerals; examples of the early practice of law; the first coins; and the invention of printing, concluding with the manuscript for Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. These works are amplified by related works of contemporary art and objects from across the history of material culture. All together, these holdings underscore the universal character of the Museum's collections. Curated by Tania Coen-Uzzielli, Head of Curatorial Affairs; and Efrat Klein, Associate Curator.
 
"Happy Birthday" and "Exhibitions-in-a-Box" (May 11, 2015 - May 10, 2016) is a birthday celebration in the Ruth Youth Wing for Art Education. The Wing opens its annual exhibition on the Museum's actual birthday with an installation devoted to artistic depictions of birthday celebrations. The exhibition features works of contemporary art, both from the Museum's collections and on loan, and includes site-specific commissions by contemporary artists in Israel. A companion exhibition, "Exhibitions-in-a-Box", features miniature diorama-style presentations of the Youth Wing's 50-year history of annual exhibitions. "Happy Birthday" is curated by Orna Granot, Associate Curator of the Library for Illustrated Children's Books. 50 x 50 is curated by Guest Curator Ido Bruno.

The second half of the anniversary year, opening in the fall, surveys the European roots of modern visual culture in Israel. "Twilight Over Berlin" (September 27, 2015 - January 30, 2016) features 50 masterworks that celebrate the avant-garde freedom that flourished in Germany in the first half of the 20th century. Among others, Expressionists Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde and such Weimar-period innovators as Max Beckmann and Otto Dix are represented with works on loan from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin through an institutional partnership that marks the concurrent celebration of 50 years of diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany.

At the same time, the Museum presents companion exhibitions spotlighting the European modernist heritage that influenced the pioneers of modern Israeli typography, graphic arts, and architecture. Together, this ensemble of exhibitions amplifies the ways in which aesthetic traditions migrated from Europe to Palestine in the period before World War II and became foundational for the development of Israel's visual culture and, in parallel, of the Museum itself.

Coinciding with the Museum's jubilee anniversary celebrations are two special installations in the Museum's Shrine of the Book - home to the Dead Sea Scrolls - which opened to the public in April 1965 as a prelude to the inauguration of the Museum's entire campus. On view beginning April 19, 2015, is a dedicated display examining the history of the Shrine itself, whose design by Frederic J. Kiesler and Armand P. Bartos has been lauded as an icon of international modernist architecture, as well as being the only permanently executed example of Kiesler's trademark language of expressionist modernism. Additionally, as a contemporary counterpoint to the ancient history of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the world's smallest Hebrew Bible, the Nano Bible created by the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, will go on view for the first time.


About The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
Over the past five decades, the Israel Museum has become one of the leading art and archaeology museums in the world, with a comprehensive collection totaling more than 500,000 objects from prehistory to the present day. Home to the most extensive collections of Holy Land and Biblical archaeology in the world, the Museum's Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Archeology Wing draws connections across many of the world's ancient cultures and religions through exhibition programming, publication, and research, advancing new scholarship in the field. Its Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Wing for  Jewish Art and Life holds among the world's most comprehensive collections of Judaica and of the ethnography of the world's many and diverse Jewish communities, together with its unique set of interiors of synagogues from Europe, Asia, and the Americas. The encyclopedic holdings in its Edmond and Lily Safra Fine Arts Wing range from Old Masters to contemporary art, including dedicated departments for Asian Art; the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas; Prints and Drawings; Photography; and Architecture and Design.