Tel Aviv Museum of Art – Visitors Guide

Tel Aviv Museum of Art is the largest art museum in Israel. It presents modern and contemporary art from Israel and the world.

Map

Tel Aviv Museum is located on Sderot Sha’ul HaMelech 27, Tel Aviv.

Directions for drivers: Link to Waze and Link to Google Maps
Directions for public transport: Link to Moovit

Interactive map of the area:

Note: You can find the map of the museum below.

Directions

You can reach the museum in different ways. If you choose public transport, you can commute by bus or train (Tel Aviv Azrieli train station is about a 20-minute walk away). You can use this Moovit preset link to set the origin and get the updated directions.

If you decide to drive, I should warn you that finding parking can be problematic. There are many parking lots in the area, but they can be full. Moreover, half-day parking will not be cheap. We parked at the Golda parking lot (7 Berkovitch Street, Tel Aviv), and the parking cost us more than a regular museum ticket.

Opening Hours

Sunday – Closed
Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday: 10:00 – 18:00
Tuesday, Thursday: 10:00 – 21:00
Friday 10:00 – 14:00

Entrance Fee

Adult: 50 NIS
Student, disabled, resident of Tel Aviv: 40 NIS
Child under 18: free

Note: The entrance fee and opening hours were updated in January 2023. In any case, recheck the official site before your visit. You can also purchase tickets through it.

Tours

When we arrived at the museum, we had no idea there would be an overview tour in English (included in the entrance fee). We were not aware of the tour because it was not visible on the official site. You can find information about upcoming tours and encounters here. If there is no scheduled event on the date, you can use the audio guides.

Audio Guides

There are audio guides in Hebrew and English. You can take them for free at the information counter.

Museum Plan

The museum’s main compound consists of two buildings: the main building and the Paul and Herta Amir building.

A passage connects these buildings, and a sculpture garden is in between.

The Main Building

The Museum’s Main Building is part of the Tel Aviv-Yafo Civic Center. This includes additional cultural institutions, such as the Beit Ariella Public Library, the Cameri Theater, and the Performing Arts Center (home of the Israeli Opera). It is also close to other important institutions, such as the Government Compound, Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), and the Court of Law.

Note: Unless stated otherwise, all quotes were taken from the official site.

Note: You can click on the map to enlarge it.

Herta and Paul Amir Building

The Herta and Paul Amir Building was inaugurated in 2011. It is, to date, the most recent addition to the Museum’s buildings, and complements the city’s central cultural complex. Its distinctive design, by American architect Prof. Preston Scott Cohen, in collaboration with Israeli project architect Amit Nemlich, drew considerable interest from the moment it was completed.

In the decades since the inauguration of the Main Building, the Museum’s collection has grown substantially — as has the population of art-lovers — while the Museum’s exhibition and operations areas remained virtually unchanged. Prof. Mordechai Omer, director of the Museum from 1995 to 2011, worked diligently to extend it into a lot that was allocated for this purpose by one of the Museum’s former directors, Marc Scheps. In October 2011, following an international architecture competition and an international fundraising effort, the Museum’s new wing — the Herta and Paul Amir Building — was inaugurated. It is a spectacular and groundbreaking example of early 21st-century museum architecture.

Note: You can click on the map to enlarge it.

Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art

As mentioned earlier, there are two buildings in this compound. That is because there is also the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art.

Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art is at Tarsat Boulevard 6, Tel Aviv.

Between Dizengoff House on Rothschild Boulevard (which served as the Museum’s first abode) and its central buildings on Shaul Hamelech Boulevard, stands the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, operating as an extension of the Museum. It is part of Tel Aviv’s lively culture hub, which includes two other major cultural institutions: the Habima National Theatre, and the Charles Bronfman Auditorium (Heichal HaTarbut), home of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

History

The Tel Aviv Museum was established in 1932, at the instigation of the city’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. He envisioned the growth of Tel Aviv into a vibrant modern metropolis with all its cultural institutions, including a museum of art. As part of his vigorous efforts to make this vision a reality, Dizengoff appealed to members of the arts and culture community in the city, enlisted his connections around the world, and ultimately even donated his private residence as the new Museum’s first abode.

In preparation for the opening of the Tel Aviv Museum, Dizengoff’s residence was remodeled to make it a suitable space for art display, leaving only the upper floor of the house for use as his private apartment. Various adjustments were made to transform the two-story residence into a public building: bedrooms were converted into three galleries, and additional sections were added in the back of the building. By the end of the construction, the building consisted of fifteen exhibition spaces and a concert and lecture hall — the very same hall in which the state of Israel would later be declared. At the same time, efforts were made to start establishing an art collection for the new Museum.

The Museum’s opening exhibition comprised works from its collection (including those of Ury Lesser, Mané Katz, Amedeo Modigliani, Marc Chagall, and Chana Orloff), and works on loan by 34 local artists (including Yosef Zaritsky, Aharon Avni, David Handler, Anna Ticho, Batia Lichansky, Avraham Melnikov, Avigdor Stematsky, Reuven Rubin, and Sionah Tagger). Besides, the exhibition featured replicas of sculptures by masters like Michelangelo, Verrocchio, Bernini, and others, depicting biblical figures.

You can find the rest of the history on the official site.

Concerts

I wanted to make a quick mention of the museum’s auditorium. They hold concerts there, and if you are interested, you can find the concert timetable here.

Hiroshi Sugimoto Exhibition

We entered the Tel Aviv Museum of Art at the Herta and Paul Amir Building. As I mentioned earlier, I was not aware of the tour. At the information center, we were informed about the overview tour. Since we had about an hour, I asked what galleries we could visit in the meantime. The woman at the information center suggested several alternatives, and since I love photography, we chose the exhibition of Hiroshi Sugimoto.

The exhibition was on the lower floor, not far from the cafeteria.

About Hiroshi Sugimoto

The works of Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. Tokyo, 1948), one of the most important and fascinating artists active today in the field of photography, are presented in a major solo exhibition for the first time in Israel. Specially designed for this gallery space, the exhibition features 34 large-scale, black-and-white photographs from Sugimoto’s central series, dating from the inception of his career to the present: “Theaters,” “Dioramas,” “Portraits,” “Landscapes,” and “Architecture.” In these series, Sugimoto surprises his viewers with an in-depth investigation of the medium of photography and the possibilities embedded in it.

In an age of endless information and digital images that flood our consciousness, Sugimoto suggests a different rhythm and a different understanding of the photographic image. His photographs do not attempt to define the world, but rather to reveal it slowly through patient observation and intense perception. They invite the viewer to observe, study, and enter a metaphoric terrain. Sugimoto photographs what cannot be represented visually: time, memory, dreams, or thoughts. The silence enveloping his photographs is an important element in his oeuvre.

Sugimoto’s images shape a comprehensive mode of seeing, which is not anchored in a specific time or place. They give rise to a suspended experience of space and time and are usually the result of a long exposure. Such is the case, for instance, in the series “Theaters,” where the gleaming, motionless screens were created by opening the shutter of the camera at the beginning of the film and leaving it open until the end of the projection. The series “Dioramas,” which was photographed in museums of natural history, features artificial scenes that document an increasingly extinct world while appearing to portray real scenes captured in nature. In the series “Portraits,” Sugimoto photographed mannequins displayed in Madame Tussaud’s wax museums. The wax mannequins, which eternalize a single frozen and embalmed moment in the life of each figure, seem to come to life in his photographs.