"If I Forget
 Thee O
Jerusalem"

TAU holds a major retrospective exhibition of designs by architect Moshe Safdie

Moshe Safdie

"In the past 50 years museums have undergone a transformation from elitist institutions serving the nobility, into large-scale public institutions with educational, commemorative and social roles," said architect Moshe Safdie, speaking at a symposium on museum architecture held at the closing of the exhibition, "Moshe Safdie - Museum Architecture 1971-1998: If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem - Memory and Identity," at TAU's Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery.

"The museum is no longer a 'temple to the arts' housed in a private villa, but a public, metropolitan institution, with a core of social activity," said Safdie. As this activity diversifies, issues such as preferred location and architectural design have come to play a greater role, especially today, when museums are financially dependent on the number of visitors they attract, he added.

While reviewing his museum projects, Safdie focused on issues crucial to museum design: lighting; the interaction between exhibits and gallery space; the museum as a feature in the urban landscape; and the museum's image, defined by its cultural context as well as its content.

National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario. View of the colonnade from the entrance pavilion.

Moshe Safdie is a world-famous architect, author and educator, with offices in Boston, Jerusalem, Montreal and Toronto. His work encompasses the design of public and academic institutions, cultural and civic projects, and housing complexes, and the planning of new communities such as the city of Modi'in in Israel. The TAU exhibition focused on the drawings, plans and models of eleven of the eighteen museums designed by Safdie around the world, from the early 1970s to the present day, including: the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Musee de la Civilization, Quebec City; the expansion of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; the Paley Center, Youth Wing of the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem; and the redesigning of the Yad Veshem Museum Complex, Jerusalem - a project that recently won him a prize. Safdie is currently working on the Sikh Heritage Museum in Punjab, India.

Born in Haifa in 1938, Safdie emigrated to Canada with his family at the age of fifteen and holds dual Israeli-Canadian citizenship. He first aquired fame for his design of Habitat (1958-67) - a modular residential project which became the centerpiece of the Expo 67 International Exhibition in Montreal. Since then, he has gained an international reputation, and is looked upon as Canada's national architect.

A meeting of East and West

Sofia Dekel, curator of the exhibition, noted the influence of Jerusalem -- a city vibrant with tradition and heritage - on Safdie's work. "The dualism that characterizes his work is a product of the confrontation between his modernist education and the impact of his links to Jerusalem," she wrote in the exhibition catalogue.

In an interview with Dekel published in the catalogue, Safdie defined his identity as a "meeting of East and West. In my design for the National Gallery of Canada my Mediterranean roots are there, and in my design of the Mamilla District or the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, my North American experience is there," he said. The Symposium was organized by the Yolanda and David Katz Faculty of the Arts, the Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, the Art History Department, and the David Azrieli School of Architecture.