{"id":356648,"date":"2025-12-18T19:00:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T19:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356648\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T19:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T19:00:11","slug":"israel-museum-receives-monumental-anselm-kiefer-sculpture-in-major-gift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/356648\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel Museum receives monumental Anselm Kiefer sculpture in major gift"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem announced Thursday that it has received a major donation of the monumental sculpture Die Erdzeitalter (Ages of the World) by German artist Anselm Kiefer from U.S. collector and philanthropist Martin Z. Margulies.<\/p>\n

The gift was facilitated by the American Friends of the Israel Museum and the Martin Z. Margulies Foundation. It reflects long-standing relationships between the museum, Margulies and the artist, whose work often explores the vast sweep of history, collective memory and the impacts of war.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

4 View gallery <\/p>\n

\"Die<\/a>\"Die<\/p>\n

Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem <\/p>\n

(Photo: Elie Posner\/The Israel Museum)<\/p>\n

Die Erdzeitalter went on public view at the Israel Museum on Thursday.<\/p>\n

The 17-foot-tall sculpture was created for Kiefer\u2019s 2014 retrospective at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. When that exhibition opened, Margulies acquired the work and installed it in a bespoke room at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, a nonprofit arts institution in Miami, Florida, that he founded to share his collection with the public. A permanent exhibition of monumental Kiefer works has been on view at the Warehouse since 2015.<\/p>\n

The imposing sculpture is made of stacked canvases interspersed with dried sunflowers, boulders, lead books and earth. It is flanked by large paintings inscribed with words such as \u201carchaikum\u201d and \u201cmesozoikum,\u201d references to geological time periods. Part totem and part funeral pyre, the work evokes the poetry of ruins and explores the relationship between humanity and the deep, cyclical nature of the cosmos. Its layered structure alludes to geological strata as well as metaphors such as the Tower of Babel and Jacob\u2019s Ladder.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

4 View gallery <\/p>\n

\"Die<\/a>\"Die<\/p>\n

Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem <\/p>\n

(Photo: Elie Posner\/The Israel Museum)<\/p>\n

The donation marks the fourth work by Kiefer acquired by the Israel Museum. The others are Mohn und Ged\u00e4chtnis (Poppy and Memory), a 1989 three-dimensional lead aircraft weighed down with oversized lead books and dry poppy plants; Aaron, a 1984 painting inspired by the Judean Desert and the biblical story of Exodus created for Kiefer\u2019s earlier exhibition at the museum; and Lilith\u2019s Tochter (Lilith\u2019s Daughters), a 1990 work focused on the Jewish folkloric figure Lilith.<\/p>\n

The museum\u2019s director, Suzanne Landau, noted that she had organized a solo exhibition of Kiefer\u2019s work in 1984 as curator of contemporary art, and that the artist\u2019s travels to Israel at that time inspired him to incorporate stories from the Hebrew Bible and elements of Kabbalah into his practice.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

4 View gallery <\/p>\n

\"Die<\/a>\"Die<\/p>\n

Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem <\/p>\n

(Photo: Elie Posner\/The Israel Museum)<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the beginning of his artistic practice, the work of Anselm Kiefer has helped process complex questions around cultural memory and life in landscapes impacted by war, putting our humanity in context with the immensity and unknowability of the universe we share,\u201d Landau said in a statement. She added that the museum was \u201cdeeply grateful\u201d to Margulies for bringing the work to Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Margulies said in a statement that aligning with institutions that respect the artist had been \u201cone of the most important factors in donating works of art\u201d during his more than 40 years of collecting. \u201cI couldn\u2019t be more pleased with this incredible work becoming part of the Israel Museum\u2019s collection, particularly given its long history of deep engagement with Kiefer\u2019s practice and its 60 years of excellence in the region,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

4 View gallery <\/p>\n

\"Die<\/a>\"Die<\/p>\n

Die Erdzeitalter presented at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem <\/p>\n

(Photo: Elie Posner\/The Israel Museum)<\/p>\n

The Israel Museum, founded in 1965, is Israel\u2019s foremost cultural institution and one of the world\u2019s leading encyclopedic museums. Its terraced 20-acre campus houses extensive collections of archaeology, Jewish art and life, and fine arts, and includes the Shrine of the Book, home to the Dead Sea Scrolls.<\/p>\n

The Margulies Collection is among the preeminent collections of modern and contemporary art in the United States, with works spanning painting, sculpture, installation, video and photography. Exhibitions from the collection are frequently on view at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Miami\u2019s Wynwood Arts District.<\/p>\n

Anselm Kiefer was born in Donaueschingen, Germany, in 1945 and has lived and worked in France since 1993. His work has been shown widely in major museums around the world. In recent years he has received several honors, including the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for the Arts in 2023 and the J. Paul Getty Medal. He has also been commissioned for major public works, including a permanent installation at the Louvre in Paris and work for the Panth\u00e9on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Israel Museum in Jerusalem announced Thursday that it has received a major donation of the monumental sculpture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-356648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}