Israel Museum, National art museum in Jerusalem, Israel
The Israel Museum is an art and archaeology museum on a hill in the Givat Ram neighbourhood of Jerusalem. Its campus of flat-roofed white concrete and stone buildings, designed by Alfred Mansfeld and Dora Gad, holds about 500,000 objects in archaeology, fine arts and Jewish art and life. The Shrine of the Book, a separate structure on the grounds, houses the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Teddy Kollek founded the institution in 1965 and commissioned Alfred Mansfeld to design the original buildings on a hill west of the Old City. The expansion in 2010 added new galleries and a redesigned entrance plaza, doubling the space for visitors.
The museum's name is often shortened locally to Muze'on Yisrael. Its Youth Wing, opened in June 1966, runs art programmes for schoolchildren and published the art magazine Mishkafayim from 1987 to 2001, edited first by Tamir Rauner. The 20-dunam sculpture garden was designed by Isamu Noguchi with rounded terraces that follow the slope.
The galleries sit on different levels with ramps and stairs between pavilions, so visitors should plan for several hours to walk through the full circuit. The sculpture garden offers shade and seating for breaks between exhibitions, and signage helps navigate the different wings.
A scale model of Jerusalem from 66 CE shows the city before the destruction of the Second Temple, with tiny buildings, streets and walls across an area of about 50 square meters (about 540 square feet). Researchers used ancient texts and archaeological finds to reconstruct thousands of details, from houses to public squares.
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