Yuval Yairi | Work

Yuval Yairi | Work
Opening Reception: Thursday, Apr. 28, 2011
Curator: Dr. Ketzia Alon

Three years ago, the curator of photography at the Israel Museum invited the artist Yuval Yairi to photograph the museum’s remodeling process from his personal perspective.

This renovation ensured the museum’s position as the architectural and cultural jewel in the crown. On July 26, 2010, the renewed Israel Museum was inaugurated in a grand ceremony. Three years of renovation had come to an end with a long list of glamorous events, gala parties and dazzling openings. Magical, glimmering moments concealed the endless hard work put in by a multitude of workers-every day and every hour. Anxious site contractors, industrious workers, shouting, pouring sweat, tight schedules, exhausting heat and freezing cold were all swallowed by the black hole of the passing of time, of history, leaving just the “object itself”, the museum, as a silent testimony to their work. The museum’s temporary stage as a construction site had made it into a kind of “antimuseum”- a site that had devoured its entire contents into its bowels- basements and warehouses- until the “storm subsided”.