Israel Museum expansion almost completed

December 24, 2009 - 9:35 AM by David

The newly refurbished Mandel Wing for Jewish Art and Life

Sometimes, we focus so much on the minutiae of Israel that we tend to lose sight of the primary treasures found within our midst – like the Israel Museum.

One of the leading art and archeology museums in the world, the 44-year-old museum is the country’s largest cultural institution, housing nearly 500,000 objects inside 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.

However, over the last two years, visitors to the museum have been greeted by tractors, bulldozers, and a curtailed experience, as the museum began undertaking a massive remodeling and expansion. The good news? It’s almost completed. The museum announced this week that the renovations on its 20 acre campus will be open to the public on July 26th, 2010, and will include the creation of new facilities as well as a comprehensive reconfiguration of the Museum’s three collection wings, encompassing 80,000 square feet of new construction and 200,000 square feet of renovated and expanded gallery space.

Among the highlights will undoubtedly be the museum’s Jewish Art and Life Wing, housing the world’s preeminent collection of Judaica and Jewish ethnography. The wing will be named the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Wing for Jewish Art and Life in honor of a $12 million gift presented this week to the museum by the Mandel family from Cleveland, Ohio, and it will present objects from sacred and secular Jewish traditions together for the first time in a newly combined permanent display.

The Jewish Art and Life Wing, which traces the diaspora of sacred and secular Jewish cultures worldwide, from the Middle Ages to the present, will lead visitors through the daily and ritual markers of the Jewish life cycle and calendar, and will include a ’synagogue route,’ which includes four original synagogue interiors from European, Asian, and American cultures.

Always an eye-opening experience with endless discoveries, the newly refurbished Israel Museum will undoubtedly surpass all expectations as a premier attraction in our attraction-filled country.

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