Art at Mishkenot Sha'ananim

At one of the seminars at Mishkenot Sha'ananim, author David Grossman remarked that during his stay here for the purpose of writing, he requested that the curtains be drawn and all the openings closed so that the view would not distract him and prevent him from concentrating on his creative work. It is indeed difficult to ignore the beauty of Mishkenot Sha’ananim or to compete with it or with the rich collection of works of art that adorn the walls of the residence. The photographic works of Israeli artists included in the Mishkenot collection are displayed in the interior public spaces and guest rooms of Mishkenot Sha'ananim and emphasize the tension between the old and the new—contemporary art versus the immortal landscape of the city’s walls—which is also the story of Jerusalem.

Artists in Mishkenot

Deganit Brest

Born in 1949 in Israel.

Deganit Brest is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and the Pratt Institute in New York. She has won many awards, including the Minister of Education and Culture Prize in 1988 and 2005, the Sandberg Prize in 1993, and the Dizengoff Prize in 2007.

Brest works simultaneously with painting and photography as competing and complementary modes of representation in terms of the interrelationships between them and the processes of image formation, vision, and consciousness. Her gaze is turned outwards, toward the “world” and often to the “place.” She looks at nature from within culture, emphasizes the scientific and the technological, and addresses myths and the media, which comprise modes of representation and "stories" about the world that create an unstable and kaleidoscopic experience of reality.

Deganit Brest