The Tower of David Museum

The Tower of David Museum is proud to present OBJECTIVE, a contemporary design exhibition that brings together for the first time two leading Jerusalem-born designers – Ezri Tarazi and Haim Parnas, former students and now senior lecturers in design at Bezalel. In the exhibition, Tarazi and Parnas show new bodies of work whose design is based on a personal study of Jerusalem, the city that served as the source of their inspiration and played a significant role in forming their identities as leading designers and platforms the process of design and “making”.

OBJECTIVE that opens on July 16, is an exhibition that fuses contemporary art and design. It is a must-see for those who want to journey into the mind of a designer, to explore how urban influences, physical, geographical  and demographic,  affect the  creativity of an artist, and offers Jerusalem with its geo-political, multi-cultural, "3-D" dimensions a new, raw, fresh look.

The exhibition is a personal journey of the two internationally recognized designers. Between Tarazi and Parnas, they have between them such names of companies and museums on their resumes as Dunhill, Gucci, MoMA, Cooper Hewitt Museum in NY, Tadiran, Bank Hapoalim, Teva, Microsoft, Intel, Applied Materials and have exhibited in New York, London, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Milan, Beijing among others. Both designers were born and  raised in Jerusalem and in OBJECTIVE they explore, for the first time, how Jerusalem has influenced the how and why of their designs , exploring the way in which the city has formed their identities as mature designers.  Despite the designers’ common ideological ground, Tarazi and Parnas are driven by entirely different design approaches. Consequently, the exhibition assigns each one a separate unit, thus enabling an increasing understanding of each designer’s thought processes as they evolve from one object to the next. 

Ezri Tarazi, famous for his tables, has created 9 limited edition "Jerusalem tables" whose design is based on an identical formative source, the map of the Old City, yet each has a different conceptual and material reference to specific aspects of the city.  Haim Parnas’s works combine improvised functional items and new sculptural objects alongside existing sources of inspiration gathered from different places; in the exhibition they are displayed in four assemblages arranged like vibrant, teaming and pulsating work environments that echo his private work space.

The exhibition does not only show case the end result, “the object of design” but also the work process, exploring the influence of the city on the now international renowned designers. The works are accompanied by films showing how the exhibits were prepared. Thus, the exhibition also provides a glimpse into the design process as it unfolds, beginning with the sources of inspiration, through the work methods, to the final product. 

Choosing the Tower of David Museum as a venue for the first joint exhibition devoted to industrial designers is significant, both in the attempt to relate to the museum’s physical setting and also to its role as an exhibition location. The works of both designers enable us to uncover the traditional artisans’ crafts of the Old City and its environs, representing workshops that are disappearing from the local landscape. The opening of the exhibition at the Tower of David closes a circle almost a hundred years old that began with the British Mandate, when the citadel served as a museum gallery showcasing the visual arts of the young Eretz-Israel (Exhibitions at the Tower of David, 1921–1932).

To a considerable extent, Objective is an exhibition that epitomizes the fulfillment of a historical vision of the Tower of David as the city’s museum, which – in addition to presenting the city’s history and displaying the citadel’s archaeological remains – is also capable of hosting contemporary art and design exhibitions within its walls that present the ‘other’ Jerusalem, the one that is ever-present in artistic and cultural thought and creation.

Opening hours for the Museum:

July:

Sunday–Thursday and Saturday: 09:00–16:00 

Friday: 09:00–14:00

August:

Sunday–Thursday and Saturday: 09:00–17:00 

Friday: 09:00–14:00

September – November:

Sunday–Thursday and Saturday: 09:00–16:00 

Friday–Saturday: 09:00–14:00

Adults: Museum visit: 36 NIS, Night Spectacular: 55 NIS, combo ticket: 70 NIS | Children (until age 18) and seniors: Museum visit: 18 NIS, Night Spectacular: 45 NIS, combo ticket: 55 NIS | Students: Museum visit: 25 NIS, Night Spectacular: 45 NIS, combo ticket: 55 NIS | Soldiers, handicapped: Museum visit: 15 NIS, Night Spectacular: 30 NIS, combo ticket: 40 NIS