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

Amon Yariv

Born in 1975 in Israel.

Amon Yariv graduated with honors from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in 2002. In 2005, he won the Haifa Museum of Art’s Rafael Angel Young Photographer Prize, and in 2006 was awarded the Gerard Levy Award for Young Photographer by the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Yariv’s work is an excellent example of contemporary art that assaults our understanding of place. Like many photographers before him, he goes out into the landscape, but photographs the findings of the encounter with it only in the studio. Through meticulous studio photography, he reveals the deep layers of the local landscape as a split space of space and time through which the contemporary emerges from the archaic and the biblical.

Amon Yariv