With hostages at its heart, a Tel Aviv museum reflects wartime responsiveness

On the morning of October 7, 2023 – it was early – Tania Coen-Uzzielli, the director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, was on her way home to Israel after attending a conference on cultural patronage in Florence, Italy – his country of birth.

While she read with dismay the information which filtered, little by little, atrocities committed in the south of Israel, as she discovered the scale of the rocket attacks which targeted the majority of the country, the employees of the museum, for their part, began to dismantle the exhibition dedicated to Alberto Giacometti, a retrospective of the works of the Swiss sculptor which was then presented in the museum annex. Staff had made a concerned call to the French foundation that owns the collection to inquire about the best way to get the works back to Paris as soon as possible.

The next day, the museum staff had resigned themselves to storing other valuable works of art in underground reserves.

The institution closed its doors in the context of unrest which followed the pogrom of October 7. The employees, however, were not idle, with the conviction that the museum could come to the aid of the thousands of evacuees from the south of the country who flocked to Tel Aviv, in search of safety in the face of the trauma and terror experienced during the days precedents – and also looking for distractions.

“We thought about our artistic mission and our role in the community,” says Coen-Uzzielli, who adds that “we started bringing displaced people here.”

In the two weeks that followed, the plaza outside the museum, home to immense space by Menashe Kadishman and Henry Moore, had become Place des Otages – an outdoor space designed to become a place of reflection and gathering for families of hostages and their sympathizers.

The organization that was formed in support of the families of the hostages had asked to be able to use the museum square, which is located directly opposite the Ministry of Defense – where decisive decisions have been made regarding the fate of the captives since the start of the war in Gaza.

The place, which became the heart of the rallies and the protest movement in favor of the release of the hostages and the rallies, was initially intended simply to be a space hosting installations to draw public attention to the critical situation of the captives and their families.

The very first installation, two weeks after the pogrom, depicted a long Shabbat table set up for the hostages, with high chairs, cups for the children and white roses.

Coen-Uzzielli had recommended placing the table so that it overlooked the museum’s entrance doors – but she had also ceded all decisions taken by the Forum of Families of Hostages and Missing Persons, then emerging, concerning the use of the place.

“It made us think about our role as a public cultural institution and it allowed us to realize what we could and couldn’t do for them,” she explains. “Its installation, on the museum square, set a certain tone – but this square is not ours, even if we are the museum.”

The relationship between the cultural institution and the hostage families has been maintained over the past 15 months and will continue as long as there are still hostages in Gaza, notes Coen-Uzzielli, who has been director of the museum since 2019 and who was previously a curator at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

More than a simple offer of service, the provision of space for the hostage families has changed the cultural institution, strengthening its determination to remain a driving force, a compass in the world of Israeli art.

The museum – like all other establishments of the same type in the country – remained closed for the first six weeks of the war, although it offered lectures on art on Zoom and activities for evacuated children.

When it finally reopened its doors in November, it reorganized its exhibitions and programming to better adapt to the situation.

By then, the Place des Otages had been completely transformed – with marquees that had been set up to host rallies and debates; objects of all kinds emblazoned with the slogan “Bring Them Home Now” offered for sale, and small stages constructed for speeches and impromptu speaking engagements by hostage family members.

In those early months, the museum offered organizers storage space and allowed attendees to use its restrooms — in addition to its air raid shelters, when sirens were activated — during rallies attended by thousands of Israelis took part on Saturday evening.

The hall of the institution now hosts, on Friday mornings, yoga classes organized as a sign of support for the hostage Carmel Gat – she was ultimately killed by her Hamas captors at the end of August 2024 – as well as the Shabbat service on Friday evening, which is organized by certain kibbutz which had paid a particularly heavy price during the pogrom of October 7.

One of several installations in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square since October 2023. (Credit: Kobi Wolf)

Therapeutic visits and museum meetings were eventually organized for those affected by grief, for the injured, and for survivors of the Supernova rave, which had taken place in the desert.

“A museum can take the temperature,” says Coen-Uzzielli. “That’s his superpower: being reactive and resilient. He needs to confront what’s happening, not just shut his doors and shut them on the world.”

The museum must therefore constantly find a balance between its mission – which is to provide the public with access to art – and the deep suffering expressed just outside its doors.

Rocket fire has largely subsided in recent months. Many works of art have recently left storage and they have returned to their rightful place on the gallery walls.

A mirror of society

At the same time, the museum – like many other Israeli museums – had to deal with reactions from the international art world to October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Coen Uzzielli was one of several Israeli museum directors to respond publicly to an open letter that was distributed by Artforum a few weeks after the Hamas pogrom – a letter that called for an end to the “institutional silence surrounding the crisis current humanitarian crisis facing 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip.

She discovered that all international projects then underway, all collaborations with Israeli artistic institutions were suspended – first because of the war, then because of pro-Palestinian cultural boycotts aimed at isolating the Jewish state.

Tania Coen-Uzzielli, director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (Credit: Hadas Parush)

“We were written to say: ‘We don’t want to be in contact with you’ and we understood that we had to find a long-term solution,” explains Tania Coen-Uzzielli.

Without international loans, with many valuable pieces in storage, museum staff had to get even more creative.

The museum organized the exhibition “Capturing a Fleeting Moment: 150 Years of Impressionism,” which was presented to the public from July to December, with major works loaned by friendly Jewish collectors. of the museum, focusing on Impressionist artists who had worked on works after both world wars – an angle that resonated with visitors, according to Coen-Uzzielli.

There was also “Cascade,” by lighting artist Muhammad Abo Salme – an installation made up of thousands of meters of strings of metal beads of the type used for military dog ​​tags, the same type that is used as a sign of solidarity with the hostages.

Abo Salme is a Bedouin artist who lived on Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the hardest-hit communities in the south – and the man wanted to show something of his connection, as an Arab, to the tragedies of in recent months.

The expression of blind empathy towards Jewish suffering has sometimes disturbed the museum’s Arab visitors, confides the director, who nevertheless speaks with pride of the program which is still offered by the museum to Arabic-speaking schools.

“A museum can contain all of these aspects,” says Coen-Uzzielli. “Israeli society contains them and the museum – which can also be a complex place – is a kind of mirror of society.”

An ode to impressionism with the exhibition “To Catch a Fleeting Moment”, from July to December 2024 (Credit Elad Sarig)

Museums are supposed to raise questions without necessarily offering answers, she adds.

“We have become different since October 7,” says the curator. “Sometimes we see things differently and we are more sensitive to what can offend people, to what can make them angry.”

An exhibition on the female body – and how it can be treated – was scheduled for 2024 but due to the pogrom of October 7, which was notably illustrated by large-scale sexual violence, it was postponed.

Over the next year, Arab women and artists will be in the spotlight. The emphasis will also be placed on Israeli artists, who currently have a less significant international platform.

“We are seen as a combative country in the art world, but we at the museum can also show another side. We are a platform illustrating all this complexity,” says Coen-Uzzielli. “I think some[ofourcolleaguesabroadwillcomeback–otherswillnotWewillhavetodemonstrateskillandresponsivenesstobestrespondtowhathappensnext”[denoscollèguesàl’étrangerreviendront–d’autresnonNousallonsdevoirfairepreuved’habiletéetderéactivitépourréagiraumieuxàcequisepasseraensuite »

A young visitor contemplates a work of art at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, which then put it in storage during the incessant rocket attacks (Credit: Guy Yechiely)

Coen-Uzzielli said plans for the museum are in place until summer 2025. That’s a much shorter time frame than usual, but the institution needs to be more responsive than in the past, mindful of this which can change.

“We are in planning mode,” notes Coen-Uzzielli, “based on how the situation evolves.”