Current Exhibitions  

Dear Visitors,

Excitement is in the air at the Israel Museum, as we near completion of our major campus renewal project and look forward to our public opening in July 2010.  As the project enters into its final phase and our permanent galleries remain closed, we invite you to participate in our continuing programs in the Shrine of the Book, Model of Second Temple Period Jerusalem, and Ruth Youth Wing, and to enjoy the beauty of the Billy Rose Art Garden.

We wish you a pleasurable visit, and we urge you to return this summer to experience the new and renewed beauty of our completed campus and our full program of exhibitions and activities.

For Museum information call: 02-6708811
info@imj.org.il 


Shmuel Katz - 60 Years of Children's Book Illustration

From November 25



Shmuel Katz, Illustration from Leah Goldberg's What Shall I Make for Lunch?

Shmuel Katz illustrated Yigal Mosinzon's mythic Hasamba series as early as 1949; he also illustrated Leah Goldberg's beloved Flat to Let. Another of Goldberg's books, What Shall I Make for Lunch?, has just been published, also featuring his illustrations - and he is still going strong...On display is a selection of Katz's works, familiar to generations of children, which were recently donated by the artist to the Israel Museum's Study Collection of Illustrated Children's Books.


In the Youth Wing


West Meets East: The Story of the Rockefeller Museum

From November 16

To the exhibition website> >>



Rockefeller Museum garden

The special story of the Rockefeller Museum, designed in the 1930s by British architect Austen St. Barbe Harrison, whose works constitute a fascinating encounter between East and West. The exhibition features a rare collection of photographs from the early days of the Museum until the present, as well as a model of the Museum produced by Harrison himself.

At the Rockefeller Museum


Video Drawing 

Until April 5
To the exhibition website


James Paterson and Amit Pitaru
Excerpt from Rhonda, 2003  |  rhondaforever.com


Drawing is an immediate, primary, and intimate medium. Video, on the other hand,is devoid of materiality and texture – a mechanical reproduction intended for a mass audience. In this exhibition, the two contrasting forms of expression are brought together in works that challenge drawing to maintain its unique characteristics, while endowing video with the added value of the artist’s touch. The works entail close observation of the process of drawing and the traces it leaves behind. They demonstrate the wide variety of its materials and stretch its conventional limits, thus enriching artistic creation in a fresh, and often surprising, way. Participating artists: Joshua Neustein, William Kentridge, Oscar Muñoz, Katerina Šedá, David Behar Perahia, Talia Keinan, Zilla Leutenegger, James Paterson, Amit Pitaru, and Maya Shan Bowden

In the Ticho House Details and information >>>
 Matters of Eternity
Special Exhibit

An intimate display of highlights from the Museum’s Archaeology Wing evokes subjects that lay at the heart of the ancient world: religious faith and ritual, divine law, gods and earthly rulers, the powerful cycle of nature and concern for the world to come – all regarded as matters of eternity. These important objects include: the fragment from a 9thcentury BCE Aramean monument that mentions the House of David; a Roman sculpture of the goddess Kore, whose annual return from the underworld heralded the coming of spring and the rebirth of nature.


Place: Youth Wing Foyer

Model of Jerusalem in the Late Second Temple Period

In the year 66 CE, the Great Revolt against the Romans erupted, resulting in the destruction of the city and the Temple. The ancient city was then at its largest, covering an area of approximately 445 acres. The model thus reflects ancient Jerusalem at its peak. Built at the initiative of Hans Kroch, owner of the Holyland Hotel, in memory of his son Jacob, who fell in Israel's War of Independence, the model opened to the public in the early 1960s on the premises of the hotel, and has now been relocated to the Israel Museum.

Three main sources were used to reconstruct the appearance of the city: writings from the Roman period, ancient cities similar to Jerusalem, and archaeological discoveries from Jerusalem itself. Extensive excavations in Jerusalem have greatly enhanced our understanding of the ancient city and enabled us to update the model, and it is expected that such work will continue in the future. 
More about the Model  > > >

Place: Shrine of the Book Complex
Curator: David Mevorah, Curator of Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Periods

A Wandering Bible: The Aleppo Codex

The amazing story of the Aleppo Codex, the most authoritative manuscript of the Masoretic text of the Bible, which was written in Tiberias in the 10th century, preserved by the Jewish community of Aleppo from the 14th century on, and brought to Israel in the 1950s. The Codex is accompanied by rare biblical manuscripts from the Late Second Temple Period and the Middle Ages and by related Jewish and Muslim objects.

Place: Shrine of the Book, Lower Level
Curator: Adolfo Roitman, Head of the Shrine of the Book and Curator of the Dead Sea Scrolls