Mobile Truth

The Israel Museum was inaugurated in 1965. It was promoted as symbol of the nation-building effort in the ‘re-born’ land – now state – of Israel. This found expression in the themed opening exhibitions; the crowning achievement was ‘Old Masters and the Bible’, featuring Rembrandt's Moses with the Tables of the Law and other works loaned by overseas museums. It was a promising start for the fledgling encyclopedic museum in Jerusalem, aspiring to be a beacon of ‘artistic truth’ which (in a paraphrase of Ezekiel) would ‘go forth from Zion’ to the (Western) world. Forty-five years later the Museum was re-inaugurated following major refurbishment and extension. For one of the opening shows, three artists, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Susan Hiller and Zvi Goldstein, were invited to curate individual displays of objects culled from its now overabundant collections. They all addressed topical issues, notably Shonibare's proposition of cultural hybridity as ‘the very opposite of nationalism’. But, granted that the Israel ...