Grapevine: Behind the scenes

The average viewer is only vaguely aware of this if at all.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Grapevine (photo credit: Wikicommons)
Grapevine
(photo credit: Wikicommons)
THE AMOUNT of effort that goes into the creation of a museum exhibition is stupendous, not only because space generally affords a larger display than can be accommodated in a regular art gallery, but also because museums, in addition to being multi-disciplined in their activities and exhibitions, also engage in the training of curators, docents and guides, restoration, and global searches for missing items from a collection.
The average viewer is only vaguely aware of this if at all. Director Ran Tal has made a comprehensive 74-minute documentary which takes viewers both into the public galleries and behind the scenes at the Israel Museum, in a bid to give the general public a broader understanding of what a museum is all about. The film will premiere at the Lev Cinema in Tel Aviv on November 26, after which it will be released nationwide.
MEDICAL DIPLOMACY is a key factor in winning friends for Israel. Even people who may not agree with many of Israel’s policies cannot help but admire what is being done for humanitarian reasons by Israeli physicians and paramedics who treat even the enemy. These include Syrian wounded from both sides of the conflict, and Palestinians from Gaza and the Palestinian Authority who cannot get the treatment they require from their own medical experts.
The Save a Child’s Heart project looks at the defect in the child’s heart and not at the child’s race or nationality. Doctors often treat children from countries with which Israel has no diplomatic relations and send home healthy children, whose lives had previously been at risk.
In addition to operating on and caring for children and adults from around the world in Israeli medical centers, Israeli physicians travel abroad to treat patients in regular hospitals and field hospitals.
For the past five years, surgeons from the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa have been traveling on a regular basis to Georgia to treat children with complex medical problems. Israeli doctors are also doing wonders in various African states, and in some places Israel has also set up hospitals.
Israel has earned international acclaim for instant response to natural disasters around the world by IDF emergency teams as well as organizations such as ZAKA, IsraAID and United Hatzalah. And that’s not all. There are areas of medicine in which Israeli specialists are considered to be superior to their colleagues elsewhere in the world, and people specially come to Israel to receive the quality of treatment which they cannot get in their home countries.
The construction of hotels on the campuses of medical centers means that relatives and friends accompanying patients can have accommodations within walking distance of the ward. Foreign patients who have to remain under observation after being discharged from the hospital are also happy to have facilities close to the hospital while they are recuperating.
AFTER ALMOST 20 years of bureaucratic and artistic disputes and heated arguments, the Yaacov Agam Museum was recently opened in Rishon Lezion in the presence of Agam, 89, who has returned to live in Israel after spending a large part of his life in France. Agam, who was born in Rishon Lezion, was best known in Israel for the rotating multicolored fire and water fountain that for many years dominated Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv.
His colorful, kinetic works have been shown in museums and art galleries around the world and sell for very high prices. The extraordinarily colorful Agam Museum features 30 of his works, and Agam has found an apartment within easy walking distance of the museum.
Entertainment at the gala opening included a contemporary ballet with the dancers emerging from Agam-style pillars. The kinetic lighting effects were also in tribute to the artist. Rishon Lezion Mayor Dov Tsur acknowledged that it had not been easy working with the somewhat eccentric Agam, but said that the end result was worth it.