Curator: Dr. Michal Mor
Exhibition Design by: Sonja Olitsky and Rona Zinger
The space around us as we walk through the different campuses of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is a testament to a century-old vision. At the turn of the twentieth century, prominent Jewish scholars and leaders – among them Prof. Zvi Hermann Schapira, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Prof. Mordechai Martin Buber, Dr. Berthold Feiwel, and Prof. Albert Einstein – envisioned a “Hebrew university,” the university of the Jewish people. The university’s past is reflected in its historical buildings, its landscape architecture, and in the many works of art on display. All these highlight the realization of the vision to create a place where the universality of the human spirit manifests itself and serve as a major spiritual center that imparts multicultural, innovative, and original knowledge.
The national-academic endeavor of founding a university was accompanied by the accumulation of various artworks over the years. This exhibition focuses on these works of art, which were purchased or donated, and have graced the university spaces for the past one hundred years. Out of more than 2,500 works in the university’s art collection, 83 were chosen to be featured in the book, created to celebrate the university’s centennial and to honor donors and supporters in Israel and worldwide.
The selection of the works in the book was made in collaboration with the university’s Artifact Committee, with the aim of giving expression to as many styles and disciplines on the various campuses, with representation to both Israeli and international art.
The commentaries that accompany the selected artworks were written in two voices, inspired by Plato’s notion of “dialogue:” the practice of observing, contemplating, and exchanging opinions, which lies at the basis of the university. In the spirit of this tradition, I invited faculty members, administrative staff, and students to explore the university, choose an artwork that speaks to them, and write about it without any prior knowledge. The writers embraced this task with relish, and we can also find in their words compelling stories and personal perspectives.
The book and the exhibition would not have come to fruition if it were not for the encouragement of the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Asher Cohen, who saw artistic value in its publication on the occasion of the university’s centenary celebrations. I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to my partners on this journey: to the researchers, administrative staff, and students who elucidated the artworks; and to the members of the Artifact Committee who helped with the selection.
The exhibition is a condensed version of the book.
Cornerstones: The Story of the Art Collection at the Hebrew University
The first artworks documented in the university were featured in exhibitions that were championed by the institution’s administration and held in the Student Club in 1938 – a year after it opened. These exhibitions were initiated by Dr. David Werner Senator, who at the time served as the administrative director of the Hebrew University, and the ethnographer Dr. Erich Brauer. At the opening reception of the inaugural exhibition, Dr. Senator stated that the purpose of the exhibitions at the club is to enrich the students’ cultural world and to encourage them to take an active part in the university’s cultural events. He expressed hope that such exhibitions would become a permanent feature at the university, to serve as a prolific cultural hub that will influence people in the university and beyond. However, the realization of this hope would have to wait, due to the War of Independence and the move from Mount Scopus to a temporary residence in Jerusalem’s city center.
It was not until the early 1950s, after the decision to establish a new campus in Givat Ram (known today as the Edmond J. Safra Campus), that the visual domain received a prominent place. The Campus Development Committee planned the new grounds as a garden city, with low buildings surrounded by open green areas, based on a hierarchy of spaces: an expansive public plaza at the center, flanked by perpendicular rows of buildings on either side that envelop the open space. This was the golden era of the collaboration between institutions for higher education and architects. In addition to architectural and landscape design, the university administration made a point of including artworks in the planning, dedicating one percent of the campus’ development budget to this objective.
In 1956, the architects approached renowned artists to submit proposals for adorning the buildings. This reflected the cultural trend that prevailed in Israel in those years, which positioned the artistic decoration of public buildings as an architectural-artistic style in its own right.
A committee of prominent architects and art professionals was established to review the submitted proposals. The diverse outlooks of the committee members reflected the desire to encourage intellectual pluralism and a productive discussion on the aesthetic space that was taking shape on campus. According to the protocol of the discussions, the selection criteria of the works were based on artistic merit and suitability to the architectural structure and its contents, with a preference to works of distinctive universal and modern artistic principles.
The first pieces fall under the category of wall art: stone and ceramic reliefs tailored to the buildings. In keeping with the dominant artistic trend in Israel at that time, most of these works were created by the young and irreverent “New Horizons” (Ofakim Hadashim) artists, characterized by colorful and formal abstraction. The outcome turned the university into a prolific cultural hub, and with the inauguration of the new complex in 1958, non-student visitors would also come to see the artworks displayed throughout the university.
In the following decades, there were two factors that revitalized and enriched the university’s art collection. The first, chronologically, was the return to Mount Scopus after the Six-Day War. The landscape architects initiated the incorporation of artworks throughout the restored Mount Scopus Campus. They wished to foster the environmental development of the campus by planning paved plazas and “green lungs.” The design of the plazas unifies the different parts of the campus through the use of local vegetation, rockeries, and granolithic paving. Once the landscape architects’ work was completed, the university administration turned their attention to the installation of public artworks. For this purpose, attempts were made to formulate a master plan for the aesthetic design of the campus, and in the early 1970s, the university created a curatorial position and appointed the academic Artifact Committee.
The artistic activity in the university has since expanded from placing items across its campuses, to setting up thematic exhibitions, both permanent and temporary. In 2000, the vision of the art history department faculty members led to the inauguration of a dedicated gallery on the Mount Scopus Campus – a new home for creativity and culture. The establishment of the art gallery was made possible thanks to the Max and Iris Stern Foundation and was named after Max and Iris Stern. Another initiative aimed at fostering the connection between science and art was led by researchers at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences, with the opening of the Martine De Souza-Dassault Brain Art Gallery in 2019.
Cornerstones: The Story of the Art Collection at the Hebrew University
Curator: Dr. Michal Mor
Exhibition Design by: Sonja Olitsky and Rona Zinger
Graphic Production: Ktzat Aheret
Assembly: Bimot