The new exhibitions at the Haifa Museum of Art are a tribute to Israeli creativity throughout the ages, from the founding of Bezalel in 1906 to contemporary art, and in a time of mourning and loss, present local creativity as a source of cultural strength. Among the artists in the exhibition are Nachum Gutman, Anna Ticho, Mordechai Levanon, Reuven Rubin, and many more.
On February 1, 2024, the Haifa Museum of Art launched “A Sun-Kissed Land: The Schusterman Collection at the Museum” alongside three other exhibitions. The exhibition presents a collection recently donated by Lynn Schusterman to the Haifa Museum of Art, which has begun to support the museum on an ongoing basis, primarily with Israeli art from the first decades of the twentieth century. The curator of “A Sun-Kissed Land: The Schusterman Collection at the Museum” is Limor Alpern.
Lynn Schusterman, an art enthusiast, is a prominent philanthropist in the U.S. and Israel. She established the family’s foundation together with her late husband, Charles, in 1987. Today, her daughter Stacy is Chair of Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, and Lynn serves as Chair Emerita. Since the earliest days of their philanthropy, they devoted substantial resources to building understanding of and support for Israel and ensuring a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, as well to strengthening the Jewish community and engaging young people with Jewish life. In Israel, the family donates to many social causes, both in routine times and in emergencies. Over the years, Lynn has donated to Israeli art and culture institutions, a field that is close to her heart.
The Schusterman Collection underwent extensive preservation and research, which enabled the display of rare works in the exhibition. For example, during conservation work, a two-sided work by Nachum Gutman from the 1930s was discovered.
The exhibition is a starting point for a journey through the history of Israeli painting, which continues in the museum’s permanent exhibition, which focuses on Israeli painting from the 1950s to the 2000s, and concludes with the museum’s rotating exhibits, which focus on contemporary Israeli paintings.
Haifa Museums General Director Yotam Yakir says: “The Haifa Museums responded to the war from the very beginning, with the understanding that this is our mission in this difficult time. In recent months, we have initiated hundreds of respite and enrichment activities for evacuated families throughout Haifa in order to provide them with an island of sanity. Even now, all Haifa museums continue to be open free of charge to reservists and families evacuated from their homes.”
Commenting on the special exhibition, the Chief Curator of the Haifa Museum of Art, Dr. Kobi Ben-Meir, says: “Three years ago, the Haifa Museum of Art began an in-depth process of critically examining its collection, reevaluating it and developing its expansion. The Schusterman Collection, which includes masterpieces from the early twentieth century, joins the museum’s existing collection and gives expression to all the different schools of thought that have been active in Israel since the establishment of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in 1906. This body of work adds a very significant artistic and historical layer to the Museum’s existing collection, which focuses mostly on Israeli art from the 1950s onwards. In this exhibition season, Israeli art from the past is viewed in relation to contemporary work.”
The exhibition “At Home: Dwelling of Loves and Anxieties” includes works by the French painter Édouard Vuillard, and is an exceptional opportunity to witness a large collection of Vuillard in Israel. “The exhibition presents works by five contemporary Israeli artists,” says Ben Meir, “who focus on the interior of their homes. The home’s interior will be examined in the exhibition as a place that concentrates all the things we love and are anxious about their fate, feelings that have become especially sharp in recent months.”
Two other exhibitions that will be launched at the museum are a solo exhibition by the painter Natalia Zourabova, dedicated to large-scale oil paintings of the interior of Zourabova’s home, and a spectacular display of mid-18th-century etchings by Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi depicting the city of Rome.
This article was written in cooperation with Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies