Tel Aviv Museum of Art visits Berlin

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of German-Israeli relations, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is sending 72 works from its collection to Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin.

By SHAWN RODGERS
Works by contemporary Israeli artists to be auctioned off at ART and TWIST Gallery (photo credit: Courtesy)
Works by contemporary Israeli artists to be auctioned off at ART and TWIST Gallery
(photo credit: Courtesy)
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of German-Israeli diplomatic relations, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art is sending 72 works from its collection to Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin. “Tel Aviv Museum of Art Visits Berlin” includes masterpieces by some of the greats of Modernist art: Marc Chagall, Edgar Degas, Wassily Kandinsky, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Lesser Ury.
They will be juxtaposed against video installations and photographic works by contemporary Israeli artists; Yael Bartana, Guy Ben-Ner, Zoya Cherkassky, Nir Evron, Raafat Hattab, Abraham Tzion Hazan, Michal Helfman, Nira Pereg, Tamir Tzadok, Nevet Yitzhak. They address personal, social and political topics.
“This important collaboration reflects one of the Tel Aviv Museum’s missions to develop ties with major museums abroad,” says Suzanne Landau, director and chief curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. “It will be the first time that the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s collection will be shown in Berlin and Germany.”
The invitation to exhibit a selection of collections was extended to the Tel Aviv Museum by Prof. Gereon Sievernich, director of the Martin- Gropius-Bau. Located in central Berlin near Potsdamer Platz, the Martin-Gropius-Bau is one of the world’s leading exhibition venues, with over 500,000 visitors annually.
“We are extremely grateful that this exhibition can take place here.
Some of the works to be exhibited in Berlin are made by German artists who were after 1933 considered not to be the official art and they were forbidden. So here we have some beautiful pieces which were collected at the time when it was difficult for these artists,” says Sievernich.
The exhibition is curated by: Raz Samira (Curator of Modern Art), Irith Hadar (Curator of Prints and Drawings) and Ellen Ginton (Senior Curator of Israeli Art) – all from the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
The grand opening, with the participation of the museum’s curatorial staff and the Israeli artists, will take place on March 26. The exhibition will run for three months, and will close on June 21.