Ra’anana’s culture hub

Orna Fichman talks about 25 years of curating the city’s art gallery.

By GLORIA DEUTSCH
Orna Fichman talks about 25 years of curating the city’s art gallery (photo credit: GLORIA DEUTSCH)
Orna Fichman talks about 25 years of curating the city’s art gallery
(photo credit: GLORIA DEUTSCH)
One of the first things Ze’ev Bielski said to Orna Fichman when she was appointed curator of Ra’anana’s municipal museum was, “I want you to put Ra’anana on the map.”
It was 1989, and he was in his first tour of duty as the city’s mayor. She was not new to the business of bringing culture to the masses, having worked in the prestigious Eretz Israel Museum. Bielski, who later left the town to become a Kadima MK (but returned when he lost his seat), knew that creating a popular cultural center would add to the already burgeoning success of the town.
“We have no sea in Ra’anana, no interesting archeological sites, no legendary history,” he told her.
Fichman promised she would do her best. In the 25 years that have passed since that conversation, few can doubt that she has achieved what she set out to do.
“We’ve had hundreds of exhibitions in the last 25 years,” she says.
The range of subjects has been impressive, and the residents of Ra’anana have been exposed to popularly presented art and culture in regular exhibitions which are changed every two months. This is all the more remarkable when one considers that Beit Yad Lebanim, over which Fichman presides as curator, is not a custom-built museum space of the kind she was used to before moving to Ra’anana.
“It’s actually a multi-functional complex, with a memorial hall for fallen soldiers, a theater and the municipal library all under one roof,” she says.
The library has proven to be a huge asset for the museum, as she decided to make the work of illustrators a central motif for many of the exhibitions.
“From the beginning, I wanted to be unique among local galleries and decided to put the emphasis on graphics, connecting the book with its illustrator,” she says. “In Hebrew, the word for illustrator is ‘me’ir’ which means someone who brings light, and this is what he or she does – lights up the text and the story. So the library is something I exploit.”
So far, 12 biennales have featured the work of countless illustrators, and she has also held single shows for the better-known artists. Michel Kishka, Uri Fink, Ruth Sarfati and Alona Frankel, all considered at the top of their field, have had their own exhibitions at the gallery.
The current exhibition, “Amrana,” presents children’s board games from the ’50s produced by the now-defunct company of the same name. A tour of the exhibition is a nostalgic celebration of an earlier, more innocent time when games were played by two or more people together and the subjects of the games promoted love of Israel and knowledge of the land.
“Once we played outside in groups; today it’s just a kid and his computer,” she points out.
Fichman was born in Tel Aviv and studied art history at Tel Aviv University, working during her studies at the Eretz Israel Museum.
“I wanted to get to know the work I was going to be involved in,” she says.
She began as a guide in the ceramics pavilion, then was promoted to examine and record the history and essence of every item on display in all the pavilions. Rehavam “Gandhi” Ze’evi, whom then-Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo “Chich” Lahat appointed to be director of the museum in 1977, became a spiritual mentor for her, as well as sandak, or godfather, to her son.
She worked in many different departments from 1978 to 1985, and married her pediatrician husband David in his last year of medical studies.
From 1985 to 1988, she took leave to give birth to a son and daughter.
Never one to sit on her hands, she wrote columns on art and culture for a popular women’s magazine until taking up her post in Ra’anana in 1989.
She is proud that well-known artists are happy to have their work displayed in the city. Moshe Gershuni, Jennifer Bar-Lev and Oded Feingert have all held retrospectives of their work at the gallery.
Among the book-related exhibitions, she has had displays of personalized book plates (ex libris), miniature and pop-up books, and books in strange shapes. Many of these came from the private collection of bibliophile Rafi Greensweig, and she is a fervent admirer of collectors, who often provide items to display.
“I very much respect collectors, people who are so mad about something they will prefer to add to their collection than buy clothes or other transient things,” she says. “Many of the exhibitions we have held have been from people lending us their treasures.”
The current exhibition comes from the private collections of six different people. As with all her displays, this one is accompanied by a full catalogue, an important element in the presentation of any exhibit.
“I insist on a catalogue because it is the only thing that remains after an exhibition has been dismantled,” she says.
The present display has been well received, especially by the older members of the Ra’anana community.
People recognize games they played in their childhood, and passersby coming into the building, perhaps to exchange a library book or visit the theater, will stop and exclaim that they have the same game at home or remember playing with it when they were young.
While almost every subject under the sun has the potential to become the theme of an exhibition, Fichman practices slight censorship, making sure there is nothing to offend religious sensibilities – such as nudity – and nothing overtly political.
The current exhibition is being shown within the framework of this month’s “On Imagination’s Wings” festival in Ra’anana, during which many other cultural activities will take place. It runs until the end of August.