Israel Museum launches 60th year with live ‘One Night’ event
Artistry of all kinds will fill the galleries of the Jerusalem institution to mark the anniversary
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Jerusalem’s Israel Museum will launch its 60th anniversary with a free, one-time event on June 12 held into the wee hours of the night, featuring live art throughout the museum galleries and sculpture garden.
There will be about 20 live art pieces — performances, installations, music, dance, and discussions — that will interact with and respond to the galleries and collections.
Museum organizers described it as an opportunity to wander in the museum galleries and get a sense of Israeli culture in an event intended to interact with 60 years of art and heritage.
The participating artists and creators include Riff Cohen, the Piyyut Ensemble, Hillel Kogan, Tal Erez, Zvi Sahar, Yonatan Ron, Nira Pereg and others, along with the museum curators, who helped shape the performances.
“I don’t come from a classic museum background or archaeology,” said Itai Doron, who is directing the evening with Dafna Kron, “and I’ve thought about how an institution can change its face for an event.”
Doron, a theater director and performance artist, views the event as a celebration of Israeli art, one that allows visitors to look at the museum and its collections from different perspectives.
As the evening’s artistic director, Doron noted that it was a challenge to plan the event given the painful realities of an ongoing war and hostage crisis.
“We wanted to show all of those issues during this period, emphasizing the freedom of thought, the freedom of movement, the freedom of creation,” he said. “Something like this event is always done with a heavy heart, thinking about what the priorities are right now,” he said.
The 20 installations will be held mostly in the museum galleries as well as in the sculpture garden and with performances on an outdoor stage.
“It’s not just a cool happening, but it’s creations with depth that look at who we are, what we are, what has changed, and the big questions from the works themselves,” said Doron. “There’s an urgency when you have it all happening in one evening, with the audience and artists creating something spectacular together.”
Doron’s advice for the free evening is not to try and see every installation, or even to pick and choose events and galleries from those being offered.
“Let yourself go, just allow yourselves to go to the corners that you’re less familiar with,” he said. “That’s how the magic really happens.”
Thursday, June 12, 6 p.m. to 1 a.m., Israel Museum.
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