Israel Museum

Israel Museum

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem (Hebrew: מוזיאון ישראל,ירושלים‎, Muze'on Yisrael, Yerushalayim) was founded in 1965 as Israel's national museum. It is situated on a hill in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem, near the Bible Lands Museum, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. A uniquely designed building on the grounds of the museum, the Shrine of the Book, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and artifacts discovered at Masada.

Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek was the driving spirit behind the establishment of the museum, one of the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the world’s leading art and archaeology museums. The Museum houses encyclopedic collections, including works dating from prehistory to the present day, in its Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Jewish Art and Life Wings, and features the most extensive holdings of biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world. In just forty-five years, thanks to a legacy of gifts and generous support from its circle of patrons worldwide, the Museum has built a far-ranging collection of nearly 500,000 objects, representing the full scope of world material culture. with some 7,000 objects and works currently online.

The director of the museum is James S. Snyder, former Deputy Director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who was appointed in 1997. Mr. Snyder oversaw a 100 million dollar campaign to renovate the museum and double the gallery space. The renewed museum opened on July 26, 2010. An integral component of the Israel Museum’s campus renewal project was the complete reconstruction and reinstallation of its three collection wings for archaeology, the fine arts, and Jewish art and life, each now centrally accessible through the new gallery entrance pavilion. Merging the Museum’s new curatorial vision together with innovative installation design, the renewed galleries enable visitors to navigate intuitively through the Museum’s encyclopedic collections, following the timeline of material culture from prehistory in the ancient Near East to contemporary art worldwide.

The museum covers nearly 50,000 sq. meters. It attracts 800,000 visitors a year including 100,000 children to its Youth Wing. The Samuel and Saiyde Bronfman Archaeology Wing contains various archaeological finds. It has the largest collection of artifacts from Israel in the world.