Exhibition openings have always been major happenings at the Israel Museum. However, in this era of Coronavirus, the challenge of keeping this hallowed tradition alive has spurred the museum’s staff to reinvision how it launches new exhibitions.
This Thursday the public is invited to a museum “first” when it hosts a “virtual opening” of the installation Inbal Hoffman: Mundane Heights online, its new venue for these types of events. The museum chose to go “digital” because it accommodates the components of pre-Covid-19 exhibition openings: greetings by the museum director, a panel discussion with the artist, and the screening of a video about exhibition preparations. Happily, however,the format also makes it possible for hundreds of viewers from around the world to watch the proceedings in real or recorded time, enabling them to feel part of the festivities.
The exhibition was borne out of the artist’s personal feeling that, over the years, home maintenance had become an increasingly dominant component in her life. The day-to-day maintenance of the house—in the narrow sense of the word as a place of residence, and in the broadest sense as family, relationships, children—filled the day, and Hoffman found herself fighting to carve out time for herself in the studio.

A mother and a housewife, she uses the mundanities of life to tap into that tension—the same tension many of us feel especially during this time when so much of life has been restricted to the home.
The artworks for Mundane Heights were created especially for the exhibition and are made from the materials that accompany the artist’s daily tasks: garbage bags, styrofoam trays, wonder sponges, irrigation pipes and more. Hoffman finds grace and beauty in them, breathes new life into them and creates fantastic worlds out of them.
You are invited to join in person or online on Thursday, October 29, for this first-of-its-kind “virtual opening. ” To confirm your attendance, please contact Michal Marmary at 054-6610602 or 08-9729114