Exhibitions

The common thread running through the exhibition is each artist’s special attraction to linear movement and its centrality in their works. Lines play an important role in all cultures, because they contribute to understanding, interpretation, and representation of reality. Humans, regardless of their affinity for art, consciously or unconsciously create lines. As walking and talking creatures who use hand gestures, humans create lines in space and time everywhere and continuously. A line can be material, like a thread, or immaterial – geometric or imaginary – like longitude and latitude lines and the horizon. A line can be a sequence of points, a product of thought, or an element associated with physical action, as in calligraphy and dance, for example.

This exhibition presents paintings and sculptures of klezmer musicians from the collection of the Mané-Katz Museum. The collection, numbering some 1,300 objects, is based on the artist's estate which he bequeathed to the city of Haifa, and which includes approximately 180 oil paintings. These works had not been exhibited for many years and have undergone extensive restoration, including cleaning, paint consolidation, and replacing of stretchers, thanks to the generous support of the Schusterman Foundation Israel.

Eti Levi's (b. 1981, Jerusalem) works emerge from an encounter with ancient textual sources and a desire to draw closer to the Hebrew language in its primal state. In the Bible and in Jewish mystical texts, "ascent" is associated with visions and experiences of both physical and spiritual transcendence. The exhibition space functions as a transitional realm, linking physical movement with shifts in consciousness. Levi regards artistic practice as a meditative act and a physical channel of expression that bypasses rational thought, allowing impressions and sensations to be embraced in their raw form.

The exhibition forms a chapter in Lian Sharkia's (b. 2000, Jatt, the "Triangle" area) journey into her grandmother's past. Born in Haifa in 1946, Samia left for the village of Jatt at the age of nineteen following her marriage. The works on view offer a glimpse into her memories and stories, reflected and reconstructed through the eyes of her granddaughter. The quest into family history thus evolves into a personal exploration of identity: the artist assumes a dual role: she listens to the stories as an outside observer, while at the same time actively participating in shaping memory.

You are invited to create lines in space without a sewing machine, without colored pencils or a paintbrush, and even without a table. The painter Paul Klee said that drawing is "a line going for a walk." Take a walk across the hanging net and add your cloth lines to the space to create a giant shared landscape image. In another corner of the space, you may walk between the nail points and use colored rubber bands to create an abstract image without a defined shape.

The permanent exhibition showcases masterpieces from the Haifa Museum of Art's collection, which encompasses over 8,000 works, charting major trends in the history of local art. It spans works from the late 19th century to the present, where face and topography are mutually reflected, indicating affinities between the furrows of plowed earth and furrowed faces, between sun-scorched soil and tanned skin, between cracked asphalt and wounded flesh.