Israel Museum hosts its own White Night
The third Contact Point at the Israel Museum offers holy rollers the chance to be cool and appreciate what’s hip
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Thousands of people descended on the Israel Museum Thursday night for the third Contact Point, a joint project — really, a party — of the museum and the Jerusalem Season of Culture.
Pegged as a live encounter between artists and audiences, it was a maelstrom of sights, scenes and sounds, Jerusalem’s version of Tel Aviv’s White Night, but held entirely on the Israel Museum campus. Jerusalemites of all ages — students and soldiers, middle-aged folk and teens, seniors and babies in strollers — wandered the lanes and paths of the museum, engaging in the 25 installations created for the evening’s entertainment.
I wandered along the rocky paths of the sculpture garden — the closest thing Jerusalem has to a sandy beach — and listened to the chimes ringing in the bushes:
From there, I went up the stairs to the Crown Plaza, where a headphone party was taking place on 1,500 headsets around Anish Kapoor’s reflective sculpture:
Here you could also listen to radio guy Beni Bashan reading from “The Little Prince,” and hear the crowd repeat his reading:
Inside of the museum, people sat around drinking beer — or coffee — taking their own private tour, or heading to the one of the exhibits, such as Sound Installation, in which the Art, Espionage musical group played “Jerusalem of Gold” based on the movements of the crowd:
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