Fact Sheet

Ancient Treasures and the Dead Sea Scrolls

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Founded in 1965, the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, is the State of Israel's leading cultural institution, and is ranked among the leading encyclopedic museums. Its landscaped 20 acre campus houses the world's most extensive collections of biblical, Jewish, early Christian and Islamic archaeology and Jewish ceremonial art and ethnography. The museum's significant holdings in the fine arts range from the Old Masters to contemporary art and they include departments for Asian and Oriental Art, the Arts of Africa and Oceania, Prints and Drawings, Photography, and Architecture and Design. The campus also includes the Shrine of the Book, which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls; the Billy Rose Art Garden; and a dynamic Youth Wing that organizes educational programs for children and adults.

FACILITIES

The Museum's terraced 20 acre campus includes 500,000 square feet of galleries for exhibitions and collections and a six acre outdoor sculpture garden. Additionally, the Museum provides arts programming at sites throughout Jerusalem, including: the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, a facility built in 1938 by the Rockefeller family for the exhibition of archaeological artifacts from Palestine discovered during the time of the British Mandate; the Paley Art Center for Youth, founded by William S. Paley, which provides arts programs for Arab children in East Jerusalem; and Ticho House, a historic house site for the presentation of exhibitions and programs relating to the visual culture of Jerusalem and Eretz Israel in the early modern period.

COLLECTIONS

Comprising nearly 500,000 objects, the Museum's encyclopedic collections reach across a breathtaking range of world culture, from prehistoric archeology of the Ancient Near East to cutting-edge international contemporary art.

Bronfman Archaeology Wing
Recognized as the foremost holdings of biblical, Jewish, early Christian and Islamic antiquities in the world, the Bronfman Archeology Wing collection is remarkable for its depth and range, as well as for its connections to many of the world's ancient cultures and religions. Encompassing some 42,500 objects, the collection traces the history of religious and daily life in the Land of Israel over 5 million years through the 18th century. The Wing also includes the Shrine of the Book - one of the most visited and recognizable sites in Israel - which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world.

Judaica and Jewish Ethnography Wing
Comprising some 24,500 objects, the Judaica and Jewish Ethnography Wing covers communities throughout the Jewish world, East and West, both extant and no longer existing, and features three complete synagogue reconstructions. The collection also includes significant and rare illuminated Jewish manuscripts.

Bezalel Fine Art Wing
The Museum possesses extensive holdings in the fine arts, comprising more than 125,000 works, among them paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture, and objects of design and architecture, by both international and Israeli artists.

Department of Israeli Art - central to the Museum's curatorial program, this extensive collection spans the late nineteenth century through the present day, reflecting changes in Israel's visual sense of identity over the years and the arts community that has flourished in the country.

Department of European Art - this collection of some 700 works comprises master paintings from the fifteenth to nineteenth century, including a concentration of works by seventeenth century Dutch painters, as well as other major schools of paintings. It also includes signature works by such key figures in Western art history as Nicolas Poussin, Peter Paul Rubens, and Rembrandt van Rijn.

Department of Modern Art - spanning the late nineteenth century through the 1960s, this collection of some 2,000 works features such renowned artists as Cézanne, Gauguin, Klee, Magritte, Miro, Monet, Moore, Picasso, Pissarro, Renoir, and Van Gogh. The Museum is also recognized as the world's leading international repository for the research and display of Dada and Surrealist art with a substantial holding of the seminal works of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp.

Department of Contemporary Art - an ongoing commitment to collecting, studying, and presenting international contemporary art has led the Museum to build a collection of remarkable strength and breadth, comprising works by such artists as Magdalena Abakanowicz, John Baldessari, John Coplans, Anselm Kiefer, Sol LeWitt, Annette Messager, Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol; and recently Mauritzio Catalan, Andreas Gursky, Mona Hatoum, and Yinka Shonibare.

The Billy Rose Art Garden - designed by sculptor Isamu Noguchi in 1965, the six acre garden displays a renowned collection of sixty large-scale sculptures and installations ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day.

Department of Prints and Drawings - the Museum's extensive collection of 60,000 works on paper ranges from works by Old Masters - many of which are based on Jewish or biblical themes - to the works of contemporary artists. It features a large group of etchings by Francisco de Goya; more than 600 drawings and prints by Picasso; 80 drawings by Jules Pascin, constituting the most important collection of Pascin's works on paper; and a large representation of works by major Israeli artists.

Department of Photography - the Museum's extensive collection of 55,000 photographs includes a broad range of works from the earliest days of photography to the present day, by such noted photographers as Man Ray, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, and Andre Kertesz. A central focus of the collection is Near Eastern photography, particularly from the nineteenth century.

Department of Design and Architecture - the Museum's design and architecture department collects and exhibits Israeli and international architectural, graphic, industrial, furniture, textile and decorative design, placing Israeli design and design history within the context of broader global trends.

Department of the Arts of Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas - an extensive collection of decorative, religious and ritual objects and artifacts, offering an impressively rich representation of these non-Western cultural traditions.

The Ruth Youth Wing
The Museum's dynamic Youth Wing - possibly unique in the world for its size and the scope of its activities - offers a wide range of programming each year to more than 100,000 schoolchildren from all over Israel, including special arts programs geared toward fostering better cultural understanding between Jewish and Arab children. Its Resnick Teachers' Training Center provides in-service training courses to 3,500 teachers annually from all sectors of Israeli society.

EXHIBITIONS

The Museum presents more than twenty temporary exhibitions each year, most of which are originated by the Museum. A significant number of Israel Museum exhibitions tour each year to institutions worldwide. Noteworthy recent exhibitions include: The Joy of Color: The Merzbacher Collection of Modern Art; Knights of the Holy Land: The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem; Cradle of Christianity; Landscape of the Bible: Sacred Scenes in European Master Painting; Dreaming with Open Eyes: the Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art; Written in the Stars: Art and Symbolism of the Zodiac; China: One Hundred Treasures; Double Dress: Yinka Shonibare; and Revelation: Representations of Christ in Photography.

PROGRAMS AND SERVICES

The Museum develops and hosts a broad range of special events, concerts, films, symposia, gallery talks, youth workshops, art classes and school programs. It also provides special programming for soldiers, senior citizens, new immigrants and the physically disabled.

SUPPORT

Since its founding, the Museum has received unparalleled support from its Friends organizations worldwide, with dedicated groups of patrons formally organized in Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Holland, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Scandinavia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The growth of the Museum has been achieved principally through their remarkable patronage, which covers nearly 60% of the Museum's annual costs and nearly all of its capital programming, and which is largely responsible for the impressive growth of the Museum's collections. The largest of these organizations, the American Friends of the Israel Museum, has provided nearly $300 million for acquisitions and operating support since its incorporation in 1968. The Museum is also supported by foundations and corporations in Israel and abroad, by State and Municipal governments, attendance-based revenues, and endowments.