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Chief Curator-At-Large, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem

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Chief Curator-At-Large, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem Art Incarnate After three decades at the Israel Museum, Yigal Zalmona sees no separation between work and his private life, even though his public position has necessitated that he repress his anarchist side. His newest book, '100 Years of Israeli Art,' is largely about his own work. Ellie Armon Azoulay Jul 09, 2010 8:22 AM Yigal Zalmona's newest book is being published on the occasion of the post- renovation reopening of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem this month. It not only sums up "100 Years of Israeli Art," as its title suggests, but also to a large extent Zalmona's own 40 years in the art world, as a critic, historian and curator. He is currently the chief interdisciplinary curator at the Israel Museum and is expected to retire in about two years, after nearly three decades as a curator in various departments. Yigal Zalmona. Credit: Uri Gershoni "Andre Malraux reminded us that in order to see the aquarium properly, it is best not to be a fish. In recent decades I've become a fish - a first-hand witness and also an active player in the field of Israeli art," writes Zalmona in the first chapter of his book. Most of "100 Years" comes from decades of exhibitions and research at the Israel Museum, which effectively gives an authoritative stamp of approval to this story of local art, as recounted on the walls of this institution. "The book relates to the great passions that have dictated Israeli life and local art - for example, the passion to shape a 'new Jew' or to formulate a collective identity. These passions transcend the walls of institutions," says Zalmona. A work by Sigalit Landau in the Israel Museum exhibition marking the decade 1998-2008. Credit: Israel Museum "I wanted to see things from an overview, as much as it's possible - from the perspective of a historian trying to identify the source of the modern highway in the goat tracks of the past. I tried to present a historical outlook that extends beyond the ideological differences between exhibition institutions." Zalmona says he has presented ideas formulated at other institutions, noting as an example "The Want of Matter" (Sara Breitberg-Semel, Tel Aviv Museum, 1986) - an exhibition and a thesis that have long been accorded unquestioned status in the history of Israeli art. The story of modern Israeli art began, according to Zalmona, with Jewish artists in Europe, some of whom came to Palestine and helped establish Bezalel art school, headed by Boris Schatz (whose large 2006 exhibition Zalmona curated ). The Zionist story is woven through the book like a leitmotif. The book ends with the decade 1998-2008 and the museum's exhibition "Real Time," which Zalmona curated with Amitai Mendelsohn as one of the "decade exhibitions" (also an initiative of Zalmona's ) to mark the State of Israel's 60th anniversary. "That exhibition, too, was a kind of summation," he says, "the end of a chapter, and therefore it seemed logical to me to end there." As opposed to the 1980 book "The Story of Israel's Art" (in Hebrew, edited by Benjamin Tammuz, Doreet Levitte and Gideon Ofrat ), Zalmona does not just chronologically review artists and trends. Instead, he offers analyses of individual works. "I decided I wasn't interested in making a telephone book," he says. "I wanted to create a book with depth. Of course I relate to certain artists who represent the period better, artists whose works I believe can explain some background." Zalmona's personality is not absent from the book. He quotes many artists, from poet T. Carmi to author Maya Arad and poet Roy "Chicky" Arad, from whom he has borrowed the discussion of the weak in Israeli art. He calls himself a Marxist. He believes "ideology is not created by the spirit, but rather from what happens in reality and society." He begins each chapter with a description of the sprit of the time. "I have tried to connect certain phenomena in art and culture to historical phenomena and events," he says. The book is being published with the Israel Museum's support, as part of the museum's 30-month-long renovation process. When the museum reopens on July 26, a ceremony will be held to dedicate the country's first permanent exhibition of Israeli art, curated by Zalmona and Mendelsohn. Zalmona, 65, was born in Tel Aviv and grew up in the Neve Shaanan neighborhood. When he was 20 he went to Paris to pursue a romantic fantasy that included studying literature, anthropology and history - without knowing a word of French. He registered for art studies at the Sorbonne, believing it would be easier for him to study something visual. "Of course this was idiotic, because you had to read an awful lot," he laughs. The 1968 student revolution occured while he was there. "There was a sense of a social utopia, that the revolution was approaching. I remember that in addition to going out into the streets and throwing stones, we painted plaster copies of Greek statues red," he says. "When I came to the Sorbonne, the university was very fine professionally, but it was conservative. Everything changed. Culturally, a revolution did happen: Academia's worldview changed as new writers with a Marxist worldview regarding art and culture appeared." The teachers and theoreticians who changed his view of art include Roland Barthes and Louis Althusser. Nevertheless, says Zalmona, "society and politics have proven that the revolution experiment crashed and failed. The right came into power. But the tension with the establishment was irreversible." He completed a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. His master's thesis was about Jean Dubuffet, the French painter and sculptor who formulated an ideology around "low art" and what is now called outsider art. The work was called "Dubuffet versus Culture." After he finished his degrees, Zalmona was offered a job as a teaching assistant at the Sorbonne, but he decided to return to Israel instead. "I was my parents' only child and at that time, I also felt my life is here," he says. "This was not a simple decision and I did not have the faintest idea what I would be able to do here." Through one of his father's dentistry patients - Yerucham Luria, who was a poet and an editor at the Am Oved publishing house - Zalmona met Haim Gamzu, then the director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. He began working there as an assistant curator, along with his friend Ilan Tamir. It was 1972 and he was not especially familiar with what was happening in Israeli art. During those years the two got to know the artists Joshua Neustein, Pinchas Cohen-Gan, Tamar Getter, Nahum Tevet and Michael Gitlin. "Gamzu, who was a very powerful person with a fascinating personality, was an art conservative, and did not accept the young artists, and we felt that needed to be changed," Zalmona says. Surprisingly, one of the models for the new perception of art and young artists was the Israel Museum in Jerusalem under the baton of Yona Fischer, who enjoyed complete freedom. "Gamzu was not prepared to hear about that," says Zalmona. "Eventually we wound up in a confrontation. We demanded more ability to decide on what we were doing, and without knowing too much about what this meant, we demanded to become curators. Once we got the title [Zalmona was curator of sculpture, prints and drawings], after a few exhibitions it reached breaking point and in 1974 we resigned." To earn his living, Zalmona started teaching at Bezalel (he is currently teaching at the art department of Shenkar School of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan ) and writing reviews for the mass circulation daily Maariv. As a critic, too, he focused on the artists of the 1970s and the work at the Israel Museum. "I was connected to the hard core of contemporary conceptual art," he says. "I saw criticism as a context that could support the activity of Yona and those artists." In contrast to the vast industry of today, at that time few catalogs were published, so every word printed in the newspapers was significant. When Israeli art curator Stephanie Rachum left her position at the Israel Museum at the start of the 1980s, the chief curator at the time, Martin Weyl, offered the job to Zalmona. "One of the best things from my perspective is that every few years I managed to change my position at the museum," he says. "Even when I started as curator of Israeli art I knew this wasn't a job for life. It wouldn't have been right for me personally, or for the art scene." Now Zalmona - married, with two children and four grandchildren - feels "the museum has become a kind of second body for me. I'm not the most veteran but I am a kind of reservoir of professional memory, or at least I'm treated that way. I've internalized it - I see it as a place and not an institution. It resonates with things I see as important in my personality and worldview. I have no separation between my workplace and my life. I am part of it from the moment I wake up in the morning until I go to sleep." Has being a part of the Israel Museum for so many years prevented you from being involved in activity elsewhere (the Tel Aviv Museum and others )? Have they found their place in your book? "The truth is, I don't know how it is possible in principle to distinguish between the narrative that developed at the Israel Museum, and which I helped shape for a significant amount of time, from the one that developed at other museums.
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