Credit: Tim Hursley, courtesy of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, has inaugurated its renewed 20-acre campus, featuring new galleries, orientation facilities, and public spaces. The multi-year expansion and renewal project was designed to enhance visitor experience of the Museum and its surrounding landscape, in complement to the original architecture and design of the campus. Led by James Carpenter Design Associates of New York and Efrat-Kowalsky Architects of Tel Aviv, the $100-million project also includes the comprehensive renovation and reconfiguration of the Museum’s three collection wings—for archaeology, fine art, and Jewish art and life—and the reinstallation of its outstanding encyclopedic collections.
The new campus also features two new monumental site-specific commissions – Olafur Eliasson’s Whenever the rainbow appears, a 2.3-meter-wide work consisting of 360 individual paintings, installed at the end of the Museum’s newly designed Route of Passage; and Anish Kapoor’s Turning The World Upside Down, Jerusalem, a 5-meter-high sculpture of polished stainless steel on Crown Plaza, the highest outdoor point on the Museum’s campus. These large-scale works respond directly to the Museum’s landscape and its new architecture and continue its long tradition of site-specific collaborations with contemporary artists.
New Architecture
Designed by James Carpenter Design Associates to complement and resonate with the original campus plan, the new architectural structures offer visitors an integrated experience of art and archeology, landscape and architecture. With the completion of the project, visitors are now welcomed to the Museum through three newly constructed glass entry pavilions—housing ticketing and information, retail, and restaurant facilities. Echoing the modernist geometry of the Museum’s original buildings, these glass pavilions are shaded within cast terracotta louver housings, designed to soften and diffuse the bright Mediterranean light while encouraging a dialogue between interior and exterior spaces across the campus.
Beyond these entrance pavilions, visitors may either ascend the Museum’s refurbished Carter Promenade or enter a newly designed route of passage, situated directly below the promenade. Leading visitors to the heart of the Museum, this enclosed route is a highlight of the design to enhance visitor experience and clarify circulation throughout the campus. The walkway is flanked on one side by a translucent glass wall with a water feature running along its top edge, also visible from Carter Promenade above.

Credit: Tim Hursley, courtesy of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The route brings visitors into the lowest level of a new three-story Gallery Entrance Pavilion, providing centralized access to the Museum’s three collection wings and temporary exhibition galleries on its main floor, while also allowing visitors to reach the Museum’s uppermost Crown Plaza via its top floor. Like the new entrance facilities, the Gallery Entrance Pavilion is a glass building housed within a terracotta louvered shade enclosure, which provides a visual counterpoint to the stone-clad facades of the Museum’s original buildings.
The Museum opens its doors to the public on July 26 with a week of concerts by prominent Israeli musicians, activities in the galleries for all audiences, and a late-night art and music festival, engaging artists, writers, and performers with the renewed Museum’s galleries and its landscape, all free with Museum admission. The Museum is extending its opening hours, offering tours of new exhibitions and gallery installations, art workshops for children, and live music in the galleries. On Tuesday July 27, legendary musician Shalom Hanoch will perform an evening concert in the Billy Rose Art Garden. The inaugural celebration culminates on Thursday, July 29, with an evening concert by Yehudit Ravitz in the Art Garden, followed by "Contact Point," a night of activities throughout the campus in conjunction with the Jerusalem Season of Culture, including dramatic encounters between artists, writers, and performers with artworks in the galleries and an innovative “silent party” surrounding Anish Kapoor’s sculpture on Crown Plaza.
These festivities will continue into the month of August with the Museum’s annual three-day Wine-Tasting Festival and its annual Kite-Flying Festival, an Art Garden concert by celebrated performer Yehuda Poliker, and art and music activities throughout the campus.

For more details go to Israel museum site

Credit: Tim Hursley, courtesy of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Published 07.07.2010