The Tel Aviv Museum of Art was Israel’s first art museum which has a prominent collection of both Israeli and international art.
The Museum holds the world’s largest collection of Israeli art, is internationally acclaimed, and is in the top hundred most-visited museums in the world.
It also holds extensive collections of modern and contemporary art, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and collection of European art from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.
The Museum’s Old Masters Collection comprises some 150 works, including unique paintings, sculptures, and objects.
The collection focuses on three major areas: Italian art in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; Flemish and Dutch art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and nineteenth-century Jewish art.
One of the masterpieces included in this exhibit is Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur, 1878, by the Jewish-Polish painter Maurycy Gottlieb.
In addition, the collection includes works by Peter Paul Rubens, Antony van Dyck, Jan van Goyen, and others.
The Museum’s Modern Art collection features Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh, Pissarro, and others.
Also on display are works by Picasso, Klimt, Kandinsky, Dali, Pollock, and O’Keeffe.
The Tel Aviv Museum was established in 1932 in at the home of the city’s first mayor and Zionist leader, Meir Dizengoff.
Dizengoff envisioned Tel Aviv a vibrant modern metropolis with all its cultural institutions, including a museum of art.
So, after his wife passed, donated his house to create the countries first art museum.
The house was remodeled to have fifteen galleries and and lecture hall.
On Friday, May 14, 1948, it was from this very hall that the State of Israel’s Declaration of Independence was proclaimed at the Museum.
However, as the museum grew it needed a building to accommodate it’s substantial collection which included Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern works so it moved to it’s current location.
Today, the Dizengoff house is home to Independence Hall.
See the Tel Aviv Museum of Art’s website for information on visiting hours, ticket prices, and how to get there.