Israel Museum Presents Longing For The East In 19th Century

The exhibition shows the artistic expression of these feelings in paintings, drawings, photographs, arts and crafts and ethnographic costumes. European painters and photographers visited biblical sites imbued with religious meaning, producing portrayals of the local landscape and population. These views of the East were suffused with holiness, but also with yearning for the exotic and the fantastic, the colorful and exciting. Eroticism can also be found, and as historians have said: "the motives of the Orient were like screens on which Europeans projected their fantasies like on a movie screen."

The exhibition examines the encounter between ideas, feelings, and forms stemming from various worldviews and faiths, and it juxtaposes works and objects from usually separate areas - European art next to Israeli and Islamic art, paintings, photos, prints, and drawings, Judaica and ethnography - mostly from the Museum's collections. The depictions of holy places on Jewish ritual objects or European bibelots are shown along with Abel Pann's paintings of seductive women; depictions of Jerusalem by artists Turner and Roberts next to early photographs of these same sites; works of Bezalel artists together with Maurizio Gottlieb's painting of "Jesus in the Temple"; and many other such encounters.

The other part of the exhibition Eden is called "Out of North Africa: Photographs of Jewish Life from the Gerard Levy Collection in the Israel Museum" will also be shown within this framework. Gerard Levy, a photography expert and collector, donated to the Museum some years ago a rare and unique collection of more than 300 ethnographic photos documenting Jewish life in North Africa in the years 1880-1910.

The Museum was fortunate to receive this special collection, which not only enriches its photography and ethnography collections, but also is an important tool for historical research. In addition to the photographs, this exhibition features splendid clothing, head coverings, and other accessories from Algeria, Morocco and Tunis from the collections of the Israeli Communities Department at the Museum. All of these items appear in the photographs of the Levy collection, and together they offer a rare glimpse of the glorious past and the rich material culture of the Jews of North Africa.

The artwork and objects in this group of interdisciplinary exhibitions were gathered from the Museum's various collections and curated by an interdepartmental team of curators. -- www.imj.org.il