Tel Aviv Museum of Art director Tania Coen Uzzielli said, “We are pleased and excited to reopen the museum’s gates to the general public and hope that all museums and cultural institutions in Israel will join us and reopen soon. I would like to thank Culture and Sport Minister Hili Tropper, who works constantly for the reopening of all museums and culture in Israel. The museum is one of the safest spaces to visit, as we strictly adhere to all Health Ministry guidelines. A mix of wonderful and new exhibitions of Israeli and international art awaits visitors here, along with classics and masterpieces by the great masters.” In light of public demand, the museum announced that the exhibition “Jeff Koons: Absolute Value, Works from the Jose and Marie Mugrabi Collection” will be extended until January 2021. The first solo exhibition in Israel by the world-famous American artist that opened in March 2020 resounded with the public and large numbers of visitors flocked to it when it reopened to visitors after the first closure. Now with its second reopening, the museum has managed to extend the exhibition again.
The museum also opened two new solo exhibitions that have not yet been revealed to the public, by Israeli artists from different generations. A photography exhibition focusing on modern architecture in the urban space by the artist Eli Singalovski, recipient of the Lauren and Mitchell Presser Prize for a young Israeli photographer, and the first museum exhibition for Melech Berger, a 94-year-old artist who worked for decades outside the central circles of the art world. An idealistic and ecological artist, he mobilizes art in the service values, ideals and morals and is driven by an urgent sense of mission. These exhibitions open alongside solo exhibitions by the artists Tigist Yoseph Ron, recipient of the Shiff Prize for Figurative Realist-Art, Michal Helfman and Karen Russo and the group exhibition at the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Family Experiential Center, “It Must Be Love” featuring personal and captivating works by 20 artists, created especially for their children.
At a time when all major museums in the world have been closed for months and the Israeli public does not dare to dream of a “museum tour” in New York, Paris, the Netherlands, Tokyo or London, the museum invites visitors to an unmediated encounter with masterpieces of the greatest masters of all time, displayed in our international collections. Van Gogh, Chagall, Picasso, Modigliani, Monet, Kandinsky, and many more are waiting for visitors to the museum, right here in the center of Tel Aviv.
In the spirit of the times, the museum presents relevant contemporary international art exhibitions, including:
• The Future, created by the Scandinavian artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset, consisting of an emergency staircase, on which sits a self-contained boy that treasures the vulnerability of his young age.
• Democracies, the video work of the Polish artist Artur Zmijewski, is presented against the background of the large number of civil and political protests in Israel and around the world and the establishment of the Tel Aviv Museum plaza as a site for demonstrations and public gatherings.
• The “Black Square” print display, inspired by the renewed power that the social network has instilled in the abstract image. This was when it was flooded with millions of black squares, to express support for the struggle of African-American citizens, against racism and violence.
• The group exhibition “If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler” also raises issues of inequality, featuring works by artists such as Adam Pendleton, Henry Taylor, Jean-Michel Basquiat and others.
Entrance to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art will be allowed in conformance with the guidelines approved by the government. The museum will be open to visitors five days a week: Tuesdays, Wednesdays from noon to 6 p.m. Thursdays from noon to 9 p.m.; Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.; Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 0p.m. Tickets are sold online, admission for children and youth up to the age of 18 and for soldiers is free.
Information is updated to the public on the museum’s website www.tamuseum.org.il