Tel Aviv

There are roughly two types of people in this world; those who love Jerusalem and those who love Tel Aviv, and never the twain shall meet. In fact, they despise each other. I am a Jerusalemite by proxy and dislike Tel Aviv. Where the homes of Jerusalem are made of stone, the apartment buildings of TA are crumbling stucco of the Bauhaus period. Vine covered terraces vs. palm lined boulevards. Old City vs. nightlife. I do like to visit Tel Aviv every now and again, mostly so I can say "I can't wait to get back to Jerusalem!" but also to enjoy those things which Jerusalem doesn't have and TA has in abundance.

I took a sheirut (group taxi) to TA yesterday in the late morning, and arrived an hour later at 12:30. I was really confused because the Tachanat Merkazit, the bus station, was not on my map. I scoured it all the way there but couldn't find it. I later learned that it is south of where my map ends, how does that happen? Anyway, several of my fellow passangers were kind enough to help me find the next intracity sheirut (the number 5) to take me to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. I was dropped off just next to the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, a little branch of the larger museum.

The Rubinstein Pavilion hosts temporary exhibits, and several years ago I had seen a really fantastic show there of Masha Zosman's work as well as some other young Israeli artists dealing mostly with ecology. The current exhibit was not as exciting for me, Performalism: Form and Perdormance in Digital Architecture. All of the pieces were miniature structures or pictures of structures with their computer blueprints. There were aspects that were interesting; the spacing of the pieces was planned by using architectual computer programs, many of the pieces were astonishing either because of the materials used or their structure, and there were a few I liked that seemed to cleverly marry the buildings shape, materials, and purpose. But many of the buildings were either overly flashy for no reason, having nothing seemingly to do with the intent of space, or were too obvious, like pratt falls, such as the airport shaped like, you guessed it, an airplane. You see, I now consider myself an expert...

I finished a wonderful book by my favorite architect just the other day. My mom bought Breaking Ground by Daniel Libeskind for me while she and my father were in Denver last month, and on my recommendation visited the Denver Art Museum (who's expansion Studio Daniel Libeskind designed), which is really incredible. Not only is the museum architectually interesting, it has wide ranging collections with interactive exhibitions, and is famous for the educational programming. The book discusses architecture's purpose, interweaving stories of Libeskind's immigrant childhood and his recent achievements. In the book he discusses his intentions in building several of his projects, what inspired the designs and the materials and what he hoped to evoke. What was amazing to me is the way he describes all of these aspects of the expansion of the Jewish Museum Berlin, because what he describes is exactly how I felt when I was there. Whereas other Holocaust museums try to reach their audiences through documentation and artifacts, this one does it through spatial emotion. Before reading the book I was very cynical towards the buildings that are planned for the 9/11 Site in NY, but I am now a believer in his plan.

Back to TA... After finishing up at the Pavilion, I visited the main building which was a short but sweaty walk away. I had hoped to catch the exhibit Depletion, but I missed it by a day or two. I was dissapointed to find very little work by Israeli artists. Their permanent collections, primarily of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism was not what I was in the mood for. I did a quick walk through of the entire museum and plan to return at the end of July if I get a chance during the conference (doubtful) for their installment of a decade of Israeli art; The 1970s: My Own Body. Overall I was surprised by how unexciting the TA Museum is, especially compared to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. I was excited to then head to...

The Reuven Rubin Museum. First of all, that is one of my favorite names in the world, due to a very kind adopted grandfather I had growing up in Indiana, Mr. Rubin. Secondly, I was introduced to Reuven Rubin at the Jewish Museum in New York when I was in the museum education course and I did a bit of research on a painting of his that I love, Goldfish Vendor. It turns out the RR Museum is a decently far walk from the TA Museum, and I was seriously sweating by the time I got there and thankful for the airconditioning (on a side note, Israelis do not seem to sweat, and I really want to learn their trick). The RR Museum is small but impressive, and I learned a lot from the audioguide as well as the wall text. Because Rubin came to Israel during the beginning of the state, and his work follows his own experience in watching Tel Aviv grown from tents on a sand dune to a real city, there is a lot of idealism and Zionist spirit in his work. Still some of the pieces also reflected the distance between even united communities, and he often had European and Mizrahi communities balance each other but not interact in his work. I also found it interesting, as the audioguide told me, that because there had been little Jewish art history (thou shall not make a graven image, etc) that Rubin, as many other artists did and do, referenced Christian symbolism in his pieces.

I then looked towards more contemporary art at the Nahalat Biyamin Market of Tel Aviv, where artists come to sel their crafts. I arrived just before closing, so that I was able to wander the stalls before everyone packed up. Galit, a friend from WUJS, came to meet me and together we walked to a cute coffee shop filled with books for an iced tea and ice coffee. Megan (also from WUJS) joined us there after bringing a lost dog back to its owner ont he other side of town. It was so nice to hang out with them, to catch up on their lives since they've both made Aliyah (become Israeli citizens). I am especially impressed with their Hebrew. Megan took us to her favorite restaurant, King George, which is exactly the kind of place there aren't enough of in Jerusalem. From their we grabbed seats just off King George Street to joke around and hang out before I had to grab a sheirut home. (Pictured: Megan and Galit)

Because it was late when I finally got back to Jerusalem, most buses had stopped running and so I got on the 6, knowing it would be a bit of a walk to my apartment. I was dropped off at the far end of a long, dark road, one which I'm usually comfortable with but seemed especially dark that night. A young man also got off the bus and said something about being afraid, as a joke I'm sure but I'm so focused in Hebrew on understanding the words I often miss the sarcasm. So we walked together, speaking completely in Hebrew. It was a nice way to end the night.