Traditional meets modern in Israel's ultra-Orthodox art
A new art gallery in the heart of an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem reflects the sector's changing attitude toward art.
A new ultra-Orthodox art gallery will shortly open in the Geula neighborhood, the heart of ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem, demonstrating the change in Israel's ultra-Orthodox sector’s outlook on art.
The gallery will be housed in the Schneller Compound, a historic building built in 1860 as a Christian orphanage and later used as a British military base and by the Israel Defense Forces at the founding of the state until 2008, before it was restored and repurposed in recent years.
Until a few decades ago, there was hardly any connection between art and the ultra-Orthodox. While there was ultra-Orthodox art, it was not a means to express a personal perspective or tell a story and certainly not a medium for protest and criticism.
“The pioneers of ultra-Orthodox art are newly religious, among them famous figures such as Ika Yisraeli, Pupik Arnon and Rabbi Uri Zohar, who in 2003 established the Art Shelter Gallery [in Makor Barush] — the first gallery in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood,” Noa Lea Cohn, a researcher of contemporary Jewish art, told Al-Monitor. She is currently writing a dissertation at Bar-Ilan University on the first wave of newly religious artists in Israel.
