TheTel Aviv Museum of Art (Hebrew:מוזיאון תל אביב לאמנותMuzeon Tel Aviv Leomanut) is anart museum inTel Aviv,Israel. The museum is dedicated to the preservation and display of modern andcontemporary art bothfrom Israel and around the world.^[1]

Tel Aviv Museum of Art

מוזיאון תל אביב לאמנות
Tel Aviv Museum of Art, main building
Interactive fullscreen map
Established	1932; 93 years ago (1932)
Location	27 Shaul Hamelech Blvd, Tel Aviv
Coordinates	32°04′39″N34°47′12″E / 32.07750°N 34.78667°E /32.07750; 34.78667
Type	Art museum
Director	Tania Coen-Uzzielli
Curator	Suzanne Landau
Public transit access	Bus Nos. 9, 18, 28, 70, 90, 111
Website	www.tamuseum.org.il/en/

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art was established in 1932 in a building at 16 Rothschild Boulevard that was the former home of Tel Aviv's first mayor,Meir Dizengoff, who had donated the property for a museum in memory of his wife, Zina, following her death in 1930.^[2] On 14 May 1948, 250 delegates quietly gathered at the museum^[3] for the historic signing of theIsraeli Declaration of Independence.^[4] In 1971, the building becameIndependence Hall when the museum relocated to 27 Shaul Hamelech Boulevard.^[5]

Curator Nehama Guralnik began working at the museum in 1971, when French was the common language among staff, including the director, administrators, and the curators. Catalogues were printed in French and Hebrew, with English introduced later that decade. Guralnik curated more than 40 exhibitions during her 34-year tenure as international art curator.^[6]

TheHelena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art opened in 1959. Planning for a new building began in 1963 when the museum's collections of modern and contemporary art began to outgrow the premises. Construction commenced in 1966 but stopped for two years due to shortage of funds, before moving to its current location in 1971.^[7]

Another wing was added in 1999 and theLola Beer Ebner Sculpture Garden was established.^[8] The museum also contains "TheJoseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Art Education Center", opened in 1988.^[9]

The museum houses a comprehensive collection of classical and contemporary art, especiallyIsraeli art, a sculpture garden and a youth wing.^[10]

Suzanne Landau, following 34 years at theIsrael Museum, was appointed director and chief curator of the museum in 2012.^[11]

In 2018, the museum set an all-time attendance record with 1,018,323 visitors, ranking 70th on thelist of most visited art museums.^[12] In 2019, the museum set a new attendance record, ranking 49th with 1,322,439 visitors.^[13] In 2022, it again ranked 49th, with 1,070,714 visitors.^[14] In 2023, it was ranked 48th onThe Art Magazine's list of the 100 most popular museums in the world.^[15]

On 23 March 2023, Tel Aviv Museum of Art was partially closed, in participation with Israel's "day of paralysis"^[16] during the2023 Israeli judicial reform protests.^[17] Following the7 October attacks and subsequent incidents related to theGaza war, theIsrael–Hezbollah conflict, and the2024 Iran–Israel conflict, the museum removed several items on display and stored them for safekeeping in a secured basement. It also moved other exhibitions to a more protected space on the facility's lower levels.^[18]

The Museum's collection represents some of the leading artists of the first half of the 20th century and many of the major movements of modern art in this period:Fauvism,German Expressionism,Cubism,Futurism, RussianConstructivism, theDe Stijl movement andSurrealism, French art, from theImpressionists andPost-Impressionists to theSchool of Paris including works ofChaïm Soutine, key works byPablo Picasso from theBlue and Neo-Classical period to his Late Period, Cubist paintings byAlbert Gleizes,Jean Metzinger, several sculptures byJacques Lipchitz, andSurrealists works ofJoan Miró.

One section of the Museum displays the history of Israeli art and its origins among local artists in the pre-state Zionist community of the early twentieth century.

In 1989, the Americanpop artistRoy Lichtenstein created a giant two-panel mural especially for the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. It hangs in the entrance foyer.^[19]

The Collection includes several masterpieces, among them the paintingFriedericke Maria Beer, 1916 by the Austrian artistGustav Klimt andUntitled Improvisation V, 1914, by the Russian masterWassily Kandinsky.

ThePeggy Guggenheim Collection, donated in 1950, includes 36 works byAbstract andSurrealist artists, including works ofJackson Pollock,William Baziotes, andRichard Pousette-Dart, and Surrealists works byYves Tanguy,Roberto Matta, andAndré Masson.

Sculptures are displayed in the entrance plaza and in an internal sculpture garden.

In addition to a permanent collection, the museum hosts temporary exhibitions of individual artists' work and group shows curated around a common theme.

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art includes The Paulson Family Foundation Building, its main structure on Shaul Hamelech Boulevard; the Herta and Paul Amir Building; and the Eyal Ofer Pavilion.^[20]

Marking its 90th anniversary, the museum's main building was refurbished and renamed The Paulson Family Foundation Building in 2021, in honour of its benefactors.^[21]

In November 2011, the Herta and Paul Amir Building on the western side of the museum opened. It houses an Israeli Architecture Archive, and a new section ofPhotography andVisual arts. The new building was designed by architectPreston Scott Cohen.^[22] The new wing houses 18,500 square feet of gallery space over five floors.^[23]

The Amir building also contains Pastel, a fine dining restaurant led by Chef Hilel Tavakuli.^[24][25][26]

In May 2023, following an extensive renovation of theHelena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, it was reopened as theEyal Ofer Pavilion, in honour of its contemporarybenefactor,^[27] with the first retrospective of the works of Swiss sculptorAlberto Giacometti in Israel exhibited on all four levels. The renovation was led by architect Amnon Rechter, whose father,Israel Prize laureate architectYaakov Rechter, built the original pavilion in 1959.^[28]

•  
  Portrait of Friederike Maria Beer,Gustav Klimt, 1916
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  The Shepherdess (after Millet),Vincent Willem van Gogh, 1899
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  Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur,Maurycy Gottlieb, 1878
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  Rue L´Hermitage,Camille Pissarro, 1866
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  Grainstack at Giverny,Claude Monet, 1889
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  Dome of the rock,Samuel Hirszenberg, 1908
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  Reclining Figure 1969–70,Henry Moore, 1960s

• Israeli art
• List of largest art museums
• Hostages Square

• The Tel Aviv Museum of Art
• "Tel Aviv Museum of Art".
•   Media related toTel Aviv Museum of Art at Wikimedia Commons