” Pictures at an Exhibition”. 

I read somewhere that the last shipment of coal from Newcastle has left the English port, thereby ending its mining heritage that dates back to the 13^th century. However, the cliché- “bringing/selling coals to Newcastle is still relevant because the other Newcastle, the one in New South Wales, is still Australia’s largest terminal for coal exports. No, this week’s post is not about carbon emissions and global warming. 

Bringing coal to and from Newcastle brought to mind the charcoal burners at Umm al Fahm (30km west of Ein Harod). As its name implies the town’s economy was once based on charcoal burning, dating back to the Mamluk Sultanate in the 13^th century. But the similarity ends there.

Umm al Fahm has often been synonymous with crime, family feuds and the outlawed Northern Branch of the Islamic movement led by Sheikh Ra’ed Salah.

Last Friday I saw another side of Umm al Fahm when together with friends I attended the opening of the Abu Shakra family artists’ exhibition at the Mishkan. Museum of Art, Ein Harod.  The exhibition at Ein Harod is of particular importance, unprecedented in size and scope. The opening ceremony was held in the auditorium adjacent to the Mishkan’s main exhibition halls where the exhibits were on display. “Spirit of Man, Spirit of Place Artists of the Abu-Shakra Family at Ein Harod. - Walid, Said, Farid, Asim and Karim Abu-Shakra” is the title chosen for the exhibition curated jointly by Dr. Galia Bar Or, and Dr. Housni Alkhateeb Shehada.

Contemporary art is well established in Umm al Fahm where the town’s own gallery was opened in 1996, the initiative of artist Said Abu Shakra, who is currently its director and chief curator. Jewish and Arab artists exhibit their works at the gallery, which has also exhibited the works of Arab artists at other galleries in Israel.

 At this juncture I want to place the Arab-Jewish relationship in a regional context. Thirty-three communities are represented on the Gilboa regional council, six of them are large Arab villages comprising 40% of the region’s population. Many of our Arab neighbours work in the region’s Jewish communities- kibbutzim, moshavim and community settlements. We all enjoy good neighbourly relations   

Our art museum has attracted notice beyond regional and national borders

Washington Post columnist James McAuley wrote about the Mishkan, Museum of Art, Ein Harod following a visit he made in 2015.

“A little-known art museum with luminous interiors, established on a struggling socialist kibbutz in the 1930s, has inspired some of the 20th century’s most iconic buildings. In 1937, the kibbutz’s leaders established a museum in the heart of their community, first housed in a three-room wooden shed and later in a structure that quietly became a source of inspiration for some of the 20th century’s most prominent architects. From the tranquil exhibition spaces of Louis I. Kahn’s Yale Centre for British Art and the careful curving roof of his Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, completed in 1972, to the intimacy of Renzo Piano’s Menil Collection in Houston, traces of the Mishkan Le’Omanut can be seen in the type of architecture that, as the self-taught Tadao Ando has put it, uses light to create ‘‘consciousness, an awareness of a larger universal rhythm and balance.

Today, the use of natural light is a common feature of museum architecture; as the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto wrote, ‘what acoustics are for a concert hall, light is for a museum.’ And yet the Mishkan Le’Omanut, which was officially inaugurated in 1948, is one of the earliest examples of a museum that used indirect sunlight with sublime results.”  The concept of building an art museum far removed from the country’s cultural hub was to say the least ambitious. “It was the brainchild of artist, Chaim Atar, who was also the kibbutz baker. Atar persuaded the kibbutz to send him to study art in Paris.” That was no mean feat, not the studies, but the persuasion.

“The Mishkan’s architect, Samuel Bickels, was a member of kibbutz Tel Yosef who had studied architecture in his native Poland, and whose vision — not unlike that of the Bauhaus architects then developing Tel Aviv — was of a 'total work of art,' in which form would follow function. Bickels imagined the museum as a place where visitors could put aside the roles they were required to perform in the rigid social structure of the kibbutz — in much the same way that Atar’s portraits were intended to help fellow kibbutzniks remember who, rather than what, they were.

But Bickels’s lasting legacy was more technical. Built with humble materials over a decade, the museum is a somewhat awkward string of 14 rooms. To conserve resources, the galleries were left unadorned and painted only in white, the ideal canvas to display both artworks and the sunlight in all its nuanced fluctuations. For those who care about spaces — like Pontus Hultén, Renzo Piano and countless other international visitors over the decades — the combination of intimate, varied rooms and light sources make for a kind of art museum, that’s not grand but perfectly executed. In the central sanctuary, light enters laterally, through tall, opaque windows, but elsewhere it seeps in indirectly, almost invisibly, through intricate ridges in the ceiling that filter solar glare into steady streams that gently roll over the walls. There is no view outside, no organic connection with the immediate surroundings. What the Mishkan Le’Omanut offers instead is a departure from context, a temporal escape.

I’ll conclude with a personal anecdote. 

The late Leah Rabin served in a Palmach patrol unit stationed at Ein Harod. Later in life, when she was Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s wife, she continued to stay in touch with members of Ein Harod and was an active member of the Mishkan’s management committee. In that capacity she volunteered to host a fund-raising function at her official residence. (Balfour Street, Jerusalem.) Mrs. Rabin invited wealthy art lovers to the function, it being clearly understood that they would make a generous donation to the Mishkan. I was working at the Mishkan at that time and was one of the museum’s staff attending the function. I was responsible for arranging the buffet – snacks and drinks which we brought with us. Later in the evening the Prime Minister entered the room quietly careful not to disturb the gathering. I was busy stocking the buffet and was unaware of his arrival till I turned and met him face to face.

“Yitzhak” he said in his unmistakable baritone voice extending his hand to welcome me.  Almost traumatised, I shook his hand and was barely able to reply  ” Beni.”

Obviously there was no need for him to introduce himself, but he did.

 Have a good weekend.

 

Beni,                                       17^th of November, 2022