Redesigning Tel Aviv

New Tel Aviv Museum of Art building to be inaugurated on November 2. So what's in plan?

Yehudit Yahav|Published: 10.25.11 , 09:54

The new Tel Aviv Museum of Art building will be inaugurated on November 2, along with the completion of the City Culture Square, which includes the Cameri Theater, the Israeli Opera House and the Beit Ariela library.

The Tel Aviv Municipality will take the opportunity to declare 2012 as the city's year of art, with dozens of artistic projects, exhibitions and festivals planned.

What will the new building include? An extensive collection of Israeli art in three huge showrooms, a design gallery, a drawing and printing gallery, an art library, a concert auditorium, shows and films, and a gallery for changing exhibitions.

The building will be named after donors Shmuel and Herta Amir, and will include an addition of some 18 square meters (194 square feet) at a total investment of about $50 million.

A sculptural object named "Lightfall", which allows natural light to flow into many corners, will be placed at the center of the building.

"The museum plan challenged me: How to combine rectangular showrooms in a triangular site," says American architect Preston Scott Cohen, who designed the building. "We decided to turn the triangle into a square by building the floors in the form of a spiral around one axis."

And what will be displayed in the new building? German artist Anselm Kiefer will inaugurate the building with his exhibition "Breaking of the Vessels", organized by late Professor Mordechai Omer, the museum's director and chief curator, who was behind the expansion project before his death.

The exhibition focuses on Kiefer's interest in Jewish tradition and in faith, mysticism, mythology and literature. Since the 1970s, Kiefer has dealt with Germany's history and culture, with WWII and its aftermath, in a painful, difficult but sober and deeply intensive dialogue with the past. His works reflect a fascinating ability to express a personal cultural conflict.

In addition, the museum will display exhibitions by two leading artists, Chanan DeLange and Yaakov Kaufman; a contemporary Israeli photography exhibition, an exhibition by artists Ori Gersht, and a selection of Israeli and international art from the museum collection.