JERUSALEM.- The Israel Museum, Jerusalem has expanded its holdings in contemporary art with acquisitions of major works by Francis Alÿs, Pawel Althamer, Camille Henrot, and Yayoi Kusama. These acquisitions span mediums and genres and deepen the Museum’s representation of pivotal artists who have made meaningful contributions to the canon of contemporary art. Marking the first works by Althamer, Henrot, and Kusama to enter the Museum’s contemporary collection, these acquisitions add further dimension to the Museum’s encyclopedic holdings, whose rapid growth throughout the past five decades will be a cornerstone of its 50th anniversary celebrations. Throughout 2015, the Museum plans to showcase the breadth of world culture represented across its collections, from archaeology to contemporary art, with major recent acquisitions and gifts being featured throughout the Museum’s galleries.

“Over the past fifty years, with unprecedented support from friends worldwide, the Museum has seen tremendous growth across the broad sweep of its collections,” said James S. Snyder, the Anne and Jerome Fisher Director of the Israel Museum. “This year, we have welcomed notable additions to our contemporary holdings. From works by Kusama and Althamer that grapple with individual identity, to Alÿs’s global perspective narrowed to a contemplative reflection on the Jerusalem landscape, this year’s acquisitions resonate with the Museum’s trademark focus, which is both local and universal, setting the stage for a deeper examination of this theme during the Museum’s upcoming 50th anniversary year.”

Among the contemporary works acquired by the Israel Museum in 2014 are:

Francis Alÿs (b. 1959, Belgium; active Mexico City) Gold Leaf Project, Palestine-Israel, 2005 Two panels: oil, pigment, and gold leaf on wood. Framed typed text. 14 x 39 cm (panels) 29.7 x 21 cm (paper) Purchase, Contemporary Art Acquisitions Committee of American Friends of the Israel Museum, New York.
Francis Alÿs’s Palestine-Israel is an intimate two-panel landscape depicting the deserted Judean Hills with the West Bank separation wall rendered in gold leaf. Reminiscent of the iconography of Heavenly Jerusalem in Old Master painting, this diptych illuminates the separation wall with the sanctified color of gold. Construction of this barrier had just begun in 2004 when Alÿs came to Jerusalem as a visiting artist and created The Green Line for his solo exhibition at the Israel Museum in 2005. Gold Leaf Project, Palestine-Israel, 2005, is a beautiful and disquieting example of a body of work that focuses on borders, lines, and traces, and on the relationship between the concrete and the imagined. Mounted next to the painting is a typed text that reads on one side, “Covering the Western Side of the Westbank Wall with Gold Leaf,” and on the other, “Covering the Eastern Side of the Westbank Wall with Gold Leaf.”

Pawel Althamer (b. 1967, Poland) Transaction, 2013 Mixed media 230 x 160 x 245 cm Gift of the British Friends of the Art Museums of Israel, London; Wendy Fisher, London; Agnès and Edward Lee, London; Barbara and Richard Lane, New York; and Anita and Poju Zabludowicz, London.
Pawel Althamer's expansive series of works The Venetians was exhibited in the Arsenale of the 2013 Biennale in Venice and at the New Museum in New York in 2014. Transaction is an eccentric sculpture, representative of Althamer’s oeuvre, which comprises many self-portraits. The figure in golden armor has the painted face of Althamer himself; his counterpart, Remigius, is characterized by a cast mask and a body made of dozens of little figures. Remigius, who fabricated these wire objects, is one of Althamer’s mentally disabled friends, with whom he has worked for 20 years, and his figures represent an alter ego for Althamer, who lives outside of the milieu of the art world. This marks the first work by Althamer to enter the Museum’s collection.

Camille Henrot (b. 1978, France; active New York) Coupé/Décalé (Cut/Set back), 2010 35 mm film transferred on Betanum 4 minutes Purchase, Les Amis Français du Musée d’Israël á Jérusalem, and Contemporary Art Acquisitions Committee of American Friends of the Israel Museum, New York.
Best known for her videos and animated films combining drawings, music, and reworked cinematic images, Camille Henrot seeks to blur the traditionally hierarchical categories of art history. Her recent work, adapted to the diverse media of sculpture, drawing, photography, and film, depicts a fascination with the "other" and "elsewhere" in terms of geography and sexuality. In Coupé/Décalé, Henrot captures the staging of a ritual organized for tourists by Melanesian Cargo cults, whose followers believe that engaging in ritual behavior brings salvation in the form of material goods. This experimental film, which has been manipulated to separate its footage into two parts and desynchronize them from one another, examines an Eastern tradition modified to uphold and reinforce Western perceptions. Coupé/Décalé (Cut/Set back), 2010, represents the first work by Henrot to enter the Museum’s collection.

Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929, Japan; active Japan and USA) Untitled (Ironing Board), 1963 Stuffed fabric, steam iron, ironing board, paint Purchased through the bequests of Lord Amulree, London; Gregoire Tarnopol and Alexander Tarnopol, New York; Dr. Solomon Kaufman, London; Gita Sherover, Jerusalem; and the Richard S. Zeisler Collection, New York; and through the gifts of René Magritte, Brussels; Harry Torczyner, New York; Leo Rogers, New York; and Barbara Tuchman, New York.
The work of Yayoi Kusama is associated with obsession. In 1958, Kusama moved from Japan to New York and began working on a series called Accumulation and Compulsion Furniture. Initially consisting of simple armchair forms covered with a fantastic growth of white upholstered forms, the project soon expanded to include diverse pieces of furniture and home furnishings. In this work, an ironing board becomes absurd and threatening, the steam iron seemingly about to scorch and flatten the mass of phallic protrusions covering its surface. Dealing with questions of identity and sexuality, Kusama’s ironing board seems to express fear of male domination, attempting symbolically to possess and defy patriarchal authority. This is the first work by Yayoi Kusama to enter the Museum’s collection.