The Israel Museum in Jerusalem announced Thursday that it has received a major donation of the monumental sculpture Die Erdzeitalter (Ages of the World) by German artist Anselm Kiefer from U.S. collector and philanthropist Martin Z. Margulies.
The gift was facilitated by the American Friends of the Israel Museum and the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation. It reflects long-standing relationships between the museum, Margulies and the artist, whose work often explores the vast sweep of history, collective memory and the impacts of war.
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Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
(Photo: Elie Posner/The Israel Museum)
Die Erdzeitalter went on public view at the Israel Museum on Thursday.
The 17-foot-tall sculpture was created for Kiefer’s 2014 retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. When that exhibition opened, Margulies acquired the work and installed it in a bespoke room at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, a nonprofit arts institution in Miami, Florida, that he founded to share his collection with the public. A permanent exhibition of monumental Kiefer works has been on view at the Warehouse since 2015.
The imposing sculpture is made of stacked canvases interspersed with dried sunflowers, boulders, lead books and earth. It is flanked by large paintings inscribed with words such as “archaikum” and “mesozoikum,” references to geological time periods. Part totem and part funeral pyre, the work evokes the poetry of ruins and explores the relationship between humanity and the deep, cyclical nature of the cosmos. Its layered structure alludes to geological strata as well as metaphors such as the Tower of Babel and Jacob’s Ladder.
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Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
(Photo: Elie Posner/The Israel Museum)
The donation marks the fourth work by Kiefer acquired by the Israel Museum. The others are Mohn und Gedächtnis (Poppy and Memory), a 1989 three-dimensional lead aircraft weighed down with oversized lead books and dry poppy plants; Aaron, a 1984 painting inspired by the Judean Desert and the biblical story of Exodus created for Kiefer’s earlier exhibition at the museum; and Lilith’s Tochter (Lilith’s Daughters), a 1990 work focused on the Jewish folkloric figure Lilith.
The museum’s director, Suzanne Landau, noted that she had organized a solo exhibition of Kiefer’s work in 1984 as curator of contemporary art, and that the artist’s travels to Israel at that time inspired him to incorporate stories from the Hebrew Bible and elements of Kabbalah into his practice.
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Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
(Photo: Elie Posner/The Israel Museum)
“Since the beginning of his artistic practice, the work of Anselm Kiefer has helped process complex questions around cultural memory and life in landscapes impacted by war, putting our humanity in context with the immensity and unknowability of the universe we share,” Landau said in a statement. She added that the museum was “deeply grateful” to Margulies for bringing the work to Jerusalem.
Margulies said in a statement that aligning with institutions that respect the artist had been “one of the most important factors in donating works of art” during his more than 40 years of collecting. “I couldn’t be more pleased with this incredible work becoming part of the Israel Museum’s collection, particularly given its long history of deep engagement with Kiefer’s practice and its 60 years of excellence in the region,” he said.
4 View gallery
Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem
(Photo: Elie Posner/The Israel Museum)
The Israel Museum, founded in 1965, is Israel’s foremost cultural institution and one of the world’s leading encyclopedic museums. Its terraced 20-acre campus houses extensive collections of archaeology, Jewish art and life, and fine arts, and includes the Shrine of the Book, home to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Margulies Collection is among the preeminent collections of modern and contemporary art in the United States, with works spanning painting, sculpture, installation, video and photography. Exhibitions from the collection are frequently on view at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District.
Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany, in 1945 and has lived and worked in France since 1993. His work has been shown widely in major museums around the world. In recent years he has received several honors, including the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for the Arts in 2023 and the J. Paul Getty Medal. He has also been commissioned for major public works, including a permanent installation at the Louvre in Paris and work for the Panthéon.