Museum of Art, Ein Harod

"Mishkan LeOmanut"

Zusia Efron, Curator
December 1970

The Mishkan LeOmanut (House of Art), the art museum at Kibbutz Ein Harod, is today one of the principal centers of art activity in Israel. It houses a massive collection of the work of Jewish artists, which is on permanent exhibition. In addition it holds special exhibitions regularly, undertakes educational projects, and engages in art research. It performs all the functions of a regional museum in a rural area, and at the same time serves as an institution for the study and encouragement of art.

Today, the Mishkan LeOmanut is supported by Israeli’s Ministry of Education and Culture. It started, however, as an “art corner” in the small wooden studio of the painter Chaim Atar (1902-1953), a member of Ein Harod and an energetic visionary of the first generation of kibbutz pioneers, who conceived the idea of the museum. It was recognized that though a full-scale museum cannot ordinarily be established or maintained by a modest rural settlement, the kibbutz was not an ordinary rural settlement : it was not a “closed” village society, but a community at once animated and sustained by its own cultural and cooperative values and an integral part of a regional and national life. This breadth of outlook was fully vindicated, and though the museum’s collection was started to satisfy the cultural needs of the members of the kibbutz, its growth into an institution of an importance extending far beyond parochial requirements ,has been a natural, organic development.

The Mishkan LeOmanut was the first rural museum in the country, and the first art museum of the kibbutz movement. From the start its exhibitions and expanding activities attracted a regular flow of visitors from the surrounding settlements. But it was an ambitious enterprise, and it was only by patient, devoted effort, and almost without any substantial means, that the first art objects were acquired and the basis of the collection established. The several aims of the Museum were to bring together the works of Jewish artists of the Diaspora from all periods; to build up a representative collection of Israeli art, with emphasis on the works of artists of the kibbutz movement; and to collect Jewish folk art of different Jewish communities and ethnic groups.

The construction of the present building was started in 1948. Designed by architect Samuel Bikels, the Museum overlooks the Jezreel Valley and commands a splendid view of the Gilboa hills and, in the far distance, of the Carmel. It has a special provisions against the glare of Israel’s Mediterranean light. At present it consists of fourteen exhibitions halls, two sculpture court-yards, a library, a workshop, and storerooms for the art treasures. Its collection now includes over 1,000 objects of Jewish folk art from thirty countries.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Jewish artists were mainly portraying the life of the Jews in Eastern Europe. Their paintings, whether romantic or realistic, expressed the toil and poverty of the Ghetto, its religious fervour, Jewish childhood, pogroms, and self-defence. Works by many of these pioneers, the first Jewish painters, such as Maurycy Gottlieb, Horowitz, Hirschenberg, Watchtel, Minkowski, Markowicz, Pilichowski, Kaufmann, and others are on permanent exhibition in the special hall of Jewish genre painters.

The Impressionist and Realist schools are represented by Rosa Bonheur, Jozef Israels, Max Liebermann, Lesser Ury and Isaac Israels from Western Europe; and by Isaak Levitan, Brodski and Robert Falk from Russia. The Expressionists and Cubists of Russia, Central Europe and the Paris school have a prominent place in the collection, in the works of Meidner, Jankel Adler, Ryback, Pascin, Mane-Katz, Mintchine, Kisling, Leopold Gottlieb, Menkes, Milich, Kremegne, Kikoine, Atlan, and many others. The English school is represented by Gertler, Kramer, David Bomberg, Meninsky and Joseph Herman; American painting, with its manifold styles, and especially the neo-realists with a social tendency, are represented by painters such as Walkowitz, Manievich, Max Weber, Raphael Soyer, Moses Soyer, Lichtenstein, Kirk, Raskin, Lozowick, Kopman, Adolph Gottlieb.

Hundreds of Jewish artists perished in the Nazi Holocaust; a whole generation vanished from the art centers of Europe – in Paris, Poland, Germany, Austria, Holland, Belgium, Yugoslavia and Greece. A collection of the works of these artists has been gathered in the Mishkan LeOmanut to commemorate their lost lives and works. Among those represented are Barczynsky, Weinles, Trembcz, Neuman, Mundlak, Kramsztyk, Korzen, Spigel, and the brothers Efraim and Menashe Seidenbeutel from Poland; from paris, the painters Henri Epstein, Zylberberg-Zber ( his graphic work ), Feder, Kars, Slodki, Weingart, Mordkin, and Rudolf Ernst from Berlin, Jessurun de Mesquita and Pinkhof from Holland; Bora Baruh, Ozmo, Kabiljo, and the sculptor Slavko Bril from Yugoslavia, along with many others.

Israeli art has close ties with the school of Paris, groups of Jewish painters in Eastern Europe and the experimental aesthetic movements of Central Europe. It developed and acquired its distinctive character, however, in the country itself. The gallery of Israel art in the Museum illustrates the half-century of its growth from its beginnings to our own time, and includes paintings by Rubin, Zaritzky, Gutman, Litvinovsky, Ardon, Janco, Kahana, Lubin, Krize, Bezerm, Mokady, Atar, and many others. The works of Shemi and Atar are part of the permanent exhibition.

The graphic arts collection contains drawings and graphic works by Pissarro, Modigliani, Pascin, Chagall (almost all his graphic work), Lilien, Hecht, Kolnik, Abram Krol from Central Europe and Paris; Luzzati from Italy; Mosha Pijade from Yugoslavia; Anatoli Kaplan, Marc Klionski and Samuel Rozin from the Soviet Union; Lasar Segall from Brazil; Ben Shahn, Baskin and Rattner, from the United States; and among the Israelis, Aschheim, Arikha, Budko, Krakauer, Steinhardt, Ticho, Shraga Weil, Ofek, Pins, Bacon, Rikman, and others.

Many Jewish sculptors from all parts of the world, beginning with Antokolski, are represented in the collection. In the sculpture courtyard there are works by Chana Orloff, Jacob Epstein (the works he bequeathed to the Museum), Glicenstein, Loutchansky, Constant and Indenbaum from Western Europe; Glid from Yugoslavia; Zorach, Gross and Harkavy from the United States; and most of the outstanding sculptors of Israel : Ben-Zvi, Lishansky, Ziffer, Lehmann, Feigin, Sternschuss, Palombo ( who executed the iron gate of the Museum), Aldouby, Yehiel Shemi, Aharon Bezalel, Hava Mehutan, Tumarkin.

In the section of Jewish Folk Art are shown ritual objects of daily use, dating from the fifteenth century to the present, from most of the Jewish communities in the near East and North Africa, as well as from Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities in Europe. The main hall of this section is a replica of an Eastern European synagogue. Among the items exhibited are the following : Torah Scrolls ( Scrolls of the Law), including a unique collection of Torah Scrolls from various Jewish ethnic groups; Torah decorations, curtains and embroideries; Sabbath decorations and prayer objects; ornaments for the high holidays – Rosh Hashana, (New Year), Yom Kippur ( Day of Atonement), Succoth ( Feast of the Tabernacles), Simchat Torah ( Feast of the Joy of the Torah); Hanukka lamps for the Feast of Light, ornaments for the Purim Feast, ceremonial utensils and Haggada Books for Pesach ( Passover), and decorations for Shavuot ( Pentecost). Also displayed are illuminated Ketubot (marriage contracts), paper-cuts, wood carvings and metal work. The section’s archives contain a collection of Hebrew lettering and printing, and drawings and photographs of synagogues and tombstone decorations in Eastern Europe, the Balkan countries, and North Africa.

The Library of the Museum contains over 3,000 volumes covering all departments of art.

Among the educational enterprises of the Museum is the loaning of art exhibitions to schools, settlements, and cultural institutions throughout the country. Educational work on the spot includes lectures and guided tours, study groups, library work, and the art teachers’ courses held at the Museum. The special exhibitions keep it in touch with art events and developments abroad.

I hope that this brief sketch of the aims and achievements of the Mishkan LeOmanut will seem to justify the praise of one of its friends who, quoting Martin Buber’s words about the art of the Jewish people, said of it : “It has the power to transform material goods into spiritual values”.

Back to the top