African artifacts, digital designs and angler art on display in Haifa
Haifa Museum of Art and National Maritime Museum showcase new artists, as well as older works from their own collections
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
New exhibits are on display at two Haifa museums, with African treasures to be seen alongside the effects of the digital era on art at the Haifa Museum of Art, and the art of anglers at the port city’s National Maritime Museum.
“Desktop: A Physical Exhibit on the Digital Age” and “Africa Calling” both opened at Haifa’s art museum on April 4.
“Desktop” is curator Yuval Sa’ar’s look at how 33 different artists receive information digitally, and how they then transform that into something physical.
Sa’ar brought in 33 newer artists to create works for the exhibit — mostly younger industrial and fashion designers, animators, photographers, architects and illustrators who are showing their work in a museum for the first time.
“They’re in their 30s. They all grew up in the digital age,” said Sa’ar.
The exhibit opens with perhaps Sa’ar’s most obvious example of the digital world’s influence on physical art — oil paintings by Amit Berman, whom Sa’ar discovered on Instagram, where he immediately noticed how Berman’s phone influences his work.
Berman creates large-scale portraits that highlight the cellphone’s omnipresence in our lives, including one with a phone in his hand as he paints a self-portrait.
“That’s his life and that’s our lives,” said Sa’ar.
Photographs of members of the queer community on their phones, by Eden Zornitser, highlight how the digital sphere has allowed them to be themselves and find their community. Neta Moses’s clever installation of a laptop placed in a terrarium, “How to enjoy nature (go outside),” offers a witty yet incisive critique of our increasingly mediated relationship with the real world.
A giant embroidery work of the familiar Microsoft logo pairs old-school craft with tech images, while colorful tablecloths are designed with gridlines for placing one’s phone, tablet or laptop while eating.
A ChatGPT room has stalls introducing new words that came about in the world of AI. Another gallery includes the work “Thanks for coming, stay forever,” by artist Roi Cohen, which employs 10 industrial fans creating chutes of air and warmth, as a reminder of what is needed to keep the digital world operating.
The “Desktop” exhibit contrasts nicely with “Africa Calling,” which reveals the museum’s longstanding African archives, including hundreds of items from the Federmann collection.
The well-known Haifa industrialist family owns the Dan hotel chain and was active in Africa for many years.
Curator Dorit Shafir, who used to be the head curator of the Africa collection at the Israel Museum, took the lead on this exhibit, exposing works that have been in the Haifa Museum archives for decades.
“It was a challenge,” said Shafir, “because the exhibit was created out of many categories of items, and not necessarily a chronological collection of items.”
There are galleries of created products, including carefully beaded fertility dolls alongside dozens of beaded caps used for brewing beer hung on a wall, demonstrating the complex craft that goes into a simple household tool.
Objects integral to daily African life —from snuff bowls and walking canes to portable wooden stools, headrests, feathered chieftain crowns, and vibrant fabrics worn by leaders — reflect the rich tapestry of tribal culture and the deep authority vested in traditional leadership.
One fascinating gallery offers a video showing African healers’ use of stones and other tools to diagnose and treat, while a large square vitrine in the center of the room holds samples of those same artifacts.
In a final gallery of the exhibit, Shafir offers a Western connection to the digital “Desktop” exhibit upstairs, with works by artist Cyrus Kabiru created during a 2019 residency in Israel.
Kabiru is known for upcycling in his work, a common African habit of always making use of discarded materials. In this work, symbolizing the fiery Jaffa sun, he deconstructs pieces of a discarded fan, turning them into lensless glasses with paintbrushes for temples.
Go fish
Meanwhile, it’s all about anglers and fishing at Haifa’s Maritime Museum, where Nika Tolstov curated a charming grouping of fishing-related paraphernalia, artworks and items from its collection that will be open through February 2026.
“This exhibition is actually how the collection speaks. It has its own language, the way of life of the fishermen,” said Tolstov.
The 140 pieces on display include angler equipment, boat models, ancient buoys from Peru, and art that relates to the world of fishermen, fishing villages and fishing life, both in Haifa and elsewhere.
The works depicting Haifa’s fishing culture and the broader Israeli coastline feel especially resonant, capturing the enduring lure of this port city for anglers — along with those who cast their lines elsewhere, including Acre and Tiberias.
Bold sketches by Hermann Struck, a German artist who immigrated to Haifa in the 1940s, use strong, expressive lines to capture the posture and motion of anglers along the shoreline.
There is also an unusual and gripping oil painting from the 1940s by Emmanuel Mané-Katz focusing on fishing boats, not his usual subject — and an exciting find for Tolstov as she dug through the collections of the museum.
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