The announcement stressed that during the coming months, Bruno would continue to work with the museum’s board of directors.
Bruno helped the museum navigate the impact of the pandemic while maintaining its staff and balancing its budget during a long and difficult year.
In a statement, Bruno said, “The Israel Museum is the most important cultural institution in Israel and among the world’s leading museums, so it has been my great privilege to stand at its helm.
“Together with the museum’s exceptional team of curators, we enhanced the stature of Israeli art within the museum, while also nurturing the museum’s enormous potential for interdisciplinary research and exhibitions.
“During my tenure, I initiated a pioneering strategic plan for the museum and improved essential work procedures, while encouraging diversity of opinion, nurturing excellence, and mobilizing resources in Israel and abroad.
“This past year was one of the most difficult in the museum’s history due to COVID-19. Nevertheless, we did not lay off a single employee and succeeded in balancing the museum’s budget for 2020 and for the following year.
“The museum has been able to return to full operations following the end of the COVID crisis in Israel. In recent months, we have opened exciting new exhibitions, welcomed tens of thousands of visitors back to the museum, and received new donations and philanthropic support from friends and supporters in Israel and abroad.
“Now that I’m ready to move to the next chapter of my professional life, I feel great satisfaction with what has been achieved, and have enormous faith in the future of the Israel Museum.”
Isaac Molho, chairman of the museum’s board of directors, said the board felt deep gratitude for Bruno’s service to the museum.
His departure marks a turbulent few years for the museum. Bruno stepped into his role in 2017, following the sudden resignation of Eran Neuman, formerly the head of the Azrieli School of Architecture at Tel Aviv University and currently the dean of the Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, TAU. Neuman left fewer than three months after he was appointed.
Many in the art world felt Neuman did not anticipate how much interference there would be from his predecessor, James Snyder, who was the director of the museum for nearly 20 years and is now the executive director of the Jerusalem Foundation.
Bruno, formerly a design professor at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, did not have previous fundraising experience, and donations were reportedly down even before the coronavirus pandemic. He had spoken about courting the hi-tech community and trying to get Israelis to donate to the museum.
Said one former museum employee, “People really like him, but the bottom line of a museum like this is the donations. He didn’t bring in enough. Would his plan to get the Israeli hi-tech world to start donating have worked, if they had given it time? Maybe. Who knows?”
One thing was certain, she said. “It won’t be easy to find someone to step into this job now.”