On view March 31 – August 29, 2015, 1965 Today provides an immersive snapshot of Israel’s aesthetic character through vi sual art, design, and moving image created at the time of the Museum’s opening a comprehensive examination of Israel’s visual culture and aesthetic character at the time of the Museum’s founding. On view from March 31 through August 29, 2015, 1965 Today features 50 select artworks created in Israel during this signature period, reflecting the range of creative production emerging from Israel’s young and dynamic art and design scene during this time. The exhibition also presents industrial design, household objects and interior settings from daily life, and newsreels and home film footage, to immerse visitors in what Israel looked like in the mid-1960s. The concurrent art scene in Europe and America is referenced by documentary images, in the form in which Israeli practitioners would have experienced them. Elsewhere in the Museum’s collection galleries, special displays highlight examples of Pop Art, Op Art, and Minimalism that would have been emerging worldwide at the time.
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Opening Day,
May 11, 1965
1965 Today is organized broadly across three chapters, exploring the material culture, art, and moving imagery of the time:
Material Culture
The opening gallery displays items from everyday life, from furniture and home appliances to fashion, records, and books. These objects all serve as signifiers of the socioeconomic
realities and the aesthetics of the 1960s, which set the stage and become the backdrop for the art of the time.
Visual Art
A selection of 50 artworks, all dating to 1965 and all drawn from the Museum’s holdings, represent the range of art produced in Israel at the time. Highlights include paintings by established artists such as Mordecai Ardon and Yossef Zaritsky, who were championing European abstraction; innovative Op Art by Yaacov Agam, a leading figure in the international movement; works by Rafi Lavie and Yigal Tumarkin, who introduced collage and Pop-like imagery into their practice; and sculptures and paintings by young, emerging artists, including Yair Garbuz and Micha Ullman, who made their first steps in the art world during this time and would become central to the history of Israeli modern art only years later. These works are displayed in alphabetical order by artist name, so as to eschew hierarchical and art historical categorization, and encourage a fresh reevaluation of renowned and lesser known artists and works from the time.
Works by major artists worldwide as well as key international exhibitions and art historical moments will be presented through black-and-white documentation on the periphery of this central installation, emphasizing the rift between “art” and “art news” in Israel at the time, and the tenuous ties between the local art scene and the international art world during the 1960s, experienced by Israeli practitioners mainly through the rudimentary channels of print media and early electronic media.
Moving Image
The exhibition’s third chapter features a special installation of original film footage, including newsreels and 8mm home movies, providing insight into how the phenomenon of the moving image was both created and consumed in Israel. This installation juxtaposes current events both at home and abroad, among them historic elections in Israel and the concurrent momentousness worldwide of the escalation of the Vietnam War and of other historical phenomena internationally.
The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. Founded in 1965, the Museum houses encyclopedic collections ranging from prehistory through contemporary art and includes the most extensive holdings of Biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world, among them the Dead Sea
Scrolls. Over its first 50 years, the Museum has built a far-ranging collection of nearly 500,000 objects through an unparalleled legacy of gifts and support from its circle of patrons worldwide.
The Museum’s 20-acre campus, which underwent comprehensive renewal in 2010 designed by James Carpenter Design Associates and Efrat-Kowalsky Architects, features the Billy Rose Art Garden, the Shrine of the Book, and more than 225,000 square feet of collection gallery and temporary exhibition space. The Museum also organizes programming at its off-site locations in Jerusalem at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, where it presents archaeological artifacts from the ancient Land of Israel; and at its historic Ticho House, a venue for exhibitions of contemporary Israeli art.
The Museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary throughout 2015, with a year-long program devoted to an exploration of Israel’s aesthetic culture in the 50 years before and after its founding.
Exhibition Organization
1965 Today is curated by Mira Lapidot, Yulla and Jacques Lipchitz Chief Curator of the Fine Arts; Dr. Noam Gal, Horace and Grace Goldsmith Senior Curator of the Noel and Harriette Levine Department of Photography; Noga Eliash-Zalmanovich, Associate Curator, Stella Fischbach Department of Modern Art; and Aya Miron, Associate Curator, David Orgler Department of Israeli Art.