Iranian missiles force museums to move valuables to safe areas
Institutions transfer works and artifacts into safekeeping, after taking similar precautions following Oct. 7 and during previous Iranian attack
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Several Israeli museums took precautions following the news of Israel’s initial attack on Iran early Friday, putting valuable artworks and artifacts into their protected spaces.
“We’re used to this,” said Suzanne Landau, director of Jerusalem’s Israel Museum, in a Kan radio interview.
“October 7 was the last time,” she added, referring to the 2023 Hamas-led terror attack that started the ongoing war.
In August 2024, museums took similar action, as Israel braced for a retaliatory attack from Iran following the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
This time, said Landau, the museum staff moved immediately after the government’s call on Friday at 3 a.m.
By 4:30 a.m., the museum staff were moving pieces from the museum’s three main collections of art, archaeology and Judaica down to the museum’s protected space, along with any pieces on loan from other museums and collections.
“Everybody knows what their job is, and the list and protocol are there,” said Landau.
The call to move the artifacts and artworks came after the museum hosted some 7,000 people for “One Night,” the first event kicking off its 60th anniversary celebrations, with art and music installations featured across the museum’s galleries.
“The Dead Sea Scrolls were first,” said Landau, referring to the seven scrolls discovered at Qumran in 1947 and held in the Shrine of the Book, the unique white domed building at the Israel Museum campus. “By 9:30 a.m., everything was done.”
The scrolls, which are placed in boxes, will also be the last artifacts brought back to their white domed home, said Landau.
Landau noted that there have not been as many items on loan to the museum over the last twenty months, since art institutions around the world have shunned Israel or preferred to keep themselves at a distance, given the war in Gaza.
“We’re in isolation right now from the art world,” said Landau in the Kan interview. “Art institutions don’t lend so easily to a country at war.”
The Israel Museum was not the only art institution to jump into action early Friday morning.
At the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a wartime protocol was immediately activated early Friday morning, said a museum spokesperson, with all of the museum’s artworks removed from the galleries and transferred to vaults and protected underground storage. Everything that was on display was moved to a secure area.
The museum also opened its vaults and storage facilities to the city’s other museums that needed protected storage for their artworks, said Tania Coen-Uzzielli, director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, to support and preserve the cultural treasures of the city and country.
Nearby, on the Tel Aviv University campus, staff at the ANU Museum of the Jewish People moved the Codex Sasson, the world’s oldest nearly complete Hebrew Bible, to a safe space in the building.
The renowned Bible was formally inaugurated and returned to its permanent exhibit space at the museum weeks earlier, ahead of the Shavuot holiday last month.
The manuscript, more than 1,000 years old, was scheduled to be permanently displayed on October 11, 2023. It had arrived in Israel several days before the Hamas onslaught on October 7, when thousands of terrorists stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and abducting 251 to Gaza.
The Times of Israel Community.