Modiin has been renewed with a new branding on the map of archeology and art in Israel. The Hasmonean Heritage Museum, located in the city, presents the story of the city, from the days of the Hasmonean family, through the various periods to the founding of the modern city. The museum, built at the initiative of Modi’in municipality, in cooperation with the Antiquities Authority and with the assistance of the Jerusalem and Heritage Ministry, is located on the business and entertainment avenue in the center of the city. Now the museum is also being renewed with alternating exhibitions of contemporary art which create a dialogue with the world of archaeology. The first exhibition will open on Wednesday 11.1.23 and will be shown in all the spaces of the museum.
MOMO, a unique line of contemporary art exhibitions that will be launched in January, will provide additional interest and content to the permanent exhibitions and performances. The exhibitions will change every six months and will combine the past together with the present and the future with the sciences of archeology and history in their various aspects, with the aim of stimulating an inter-period discourse alongside an inter-generational discourse within Israeli art itself.
“Urn and now“, a group exhibition of Israeli art, will be shown in the museum space where the exhibits are placed, in the halls and among the exhibits. Pottery is the most common find in the archaeological dig. Pottery fragments and pots are the actual remains left behind by man, as opposed to the spiritual remains (such as poetry, philosophy, etc.). In order To obtain the archaeological findings, the researchers must go out into the field and dig in the ground, dive in the sea, and sometimes they are simply visible. In Greek and Roman art, the urn had diverse meanings, both as an object and as an image. The painting on the Greek urns was, for centuries, a distinct artistic expression. Urns served as a source of inspiration in their works of Bezalel artists and the paintings of painters such as Abel Pan or Nachum Gutman, Gustav Dora and others.
The new exhibition seeks to examine the urn as a visual expression, as a text that conveys information about research that teaches about the various layers of culture. The works of the artists in the exhibition examine the various aspects, in relation to the role of the urn in today’s consumer culture, and raise various anthropological issues that come to us in bits and pieces from the dirt and from a distance of thousands of years back – and come to examine ourselves today, in order to decide how and whether a culture can continue to preserve itself or to bring up pottery.
treasures: Nitza Peri, Merav Shay
Address: Blood of the Maccabees 24 Modi’in. Details and opening hours on the museum website