A Century of Israeli Art by Yigal Zalmona – a landmark survey of the last hundred years of art in Israel – was launched at Mansion House in the City of London on Friday 14 June in the presence of the Lady Mayoress Clare Gifford, His Excellency Daniel Taub, Ambassador of Israel, and James S Snyder, Director, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
The event was hosted by the Embassy of Israel, Lund Humphries and Guy & Marion Naggar and was supported by the Ben Uri Gallery
Published by Lund Humphries in association with the Israel Museum, Jerusalem and written by art historian, critic and the Museum’s former Chief Curator at Large Yigal Zalmona, this landmark publication is much more than a history of the arts: it is a cultural and political history of Israel and the major events and ideas that have shaped the country, its people and its art over the last 100 years.
A Century of Israeli Art - Yigal Zalmona
Guests welcomed by the Lady Mayoress to the Mansion House were figures from the British and Israeli art and cultural communities – authors, patrons, curators, collectors and commentators – including David Glasser, Chair and Chief Executive of The Ben Uri Gallery (also a supporter of the event);Anke Adler-Slottke, International Director at Christie’s; Ivona Blazwick, Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery; Brett Rogers, Director of The Photographers’ Gallery; Liz Horne, MD of Royal Academy Enterprises; gallerist Michael Hoppen; Israeli artists Ori Gersht and Nogah Engler, Lund Humphries authors Monica Bohm-Duchen, Ian Collins and Marjorie Althorpe-Guyton; Abigail Morris, Director of the Jewish Museum, London; Hester Abrams, Director of Jewish Book Week; and members of the British Friends of the Art Museums of Israel (BFAMI)
Left to right: Candida Gertler, founder and director of Outset, Iwona Blazwick, Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, HE Daniel Taub and Hester Abrams, Director of Jewish Book Week
His Excellency Daniel Taub, Ambassador of Israel, said in his speech that this ‘is a very moving event. Any Israeli who looks at this book sees a little more than simply a hundred years of Israeli art. One of the things that is amazing about the book is the political context and social. When Israelis look at the book they see something: the Jewish people re-learning the language of visual art after their return to the land of Israel.’
James Snyder, Director of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem then spoke of the years of scholarly endeavour which his colleague, author and curator Yigal Zalmona, had dedicated to this book, partly because the story of Israeli art was in a way the story of Zalmona’s life too. A highly engaging read, perhaps A Century of Israeli Art could be considered, in a sense, an autobiography as well as an art book?
HE Daniel Taub with James Snyder, Director of The Israel Museum
Lucy Myers, Managing Director of Lund Humphries, explained how the book’s publication was a result of a meeting at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2011 with the Israel Museum’s Product Manager, who was determined that the book should have an English publisher, and looked forward to Lund Humphries’ next collaboration with the Israel Museum: Displaced Visions (to be published in July) – the first book to explore the wide-ranging impact of migration on Modernist photography and featuring rarely seen images by Man Ray and others.
Photo Credits: Lund Humphries