AMOCAH
The Arab Museum of Contemporary Art and Heritage
AMOCAH, the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art and Heritage, the first of its kind in Israel, is opening in Sakhnin.
The Arab Museum of Contemporary Art and Heritage, Sakhnin, will open in December 2014. The museum holds a collection of over 2000 Palestinian-Arab heritage items and about 200 contemporary international works of art. The museum is a cooperative initiative of Belu-Simion Fainaru and Avital Bar-Shay, initiators and directors of the museum as well as initiators and curators of the Mediterranean Biennale in Sakhnin together with the Municipality of Sakhnin, thereby creating a new reality of cooperation between Jews and Arabs.
AMOCAH, the Arab Museum of Contemporary Art and Heritage, Sakhnin, is the first museum of its kind to be established in an Arab city in Israel. For the first time in Israel an Arab museum of contemporary international works of art and Palestinian-Arab heritage will open and present exhibitions of leading artists from Israel and the world. The museum has a collection of over 2000 items connected to the Palestinian-Arab heritage and about 200 contemporary international works of art. The museum will open in the ancient city of Sakhnin.
The goal of the museum is to exhibit local and international contemporary art combined with items of Palestinian-Arab heritage in order to promote peace and dialogue by means of art activities, mutual confidence building between neighbors and a strengthening of values of equality and mutuality leading toward the creation of an infrastructure for human dialogue and coexistence between communities and cultures in conflict. Belu-Simion Fainaru and Avital Bar-Shay, the initiators and directors of the museum, hope that through the intervention of art controversies could be bridged with the emphasis on multiculturalism, art creativity and human dignity as well as vision and hope for coexistence and a better future.
Fainaru and Bar-Shay conceived the vision of the museum after having launched the Second Mediterranean Biennale in Sakhnin in the previous year. The museum will open this December thanks to the cooperation of the Mayor of Saknin, Mazen Ghanaim, and the Sakhnin Municipality.
The opening exhibition of the museum is titled HIWAR, which means dialogue in Arabic. The list of artists exhibiting includes: Marina Abramović, Larry Abramson, Yannis Kounellis, Abir Attallah, Christian Boltanski, Mohamad Said Kalash, Johannes Vogel, Raad Boya, Herman Nitz, Huda Jamal, Mounir Fatmi, Mahmoud Badarny, Bottina Abu Melhem, Micha Ullman, Asad Azi, Dani Karavan, Nidal Jabarin, Tamir Lichtenberg, Meirav Heiman, Zuhadi Qadri, Rani Zahrani, David Wakstein and others.
At the opening, the museum will launch an artists hosting program that will encourage Israeli and international artists to come and stay at the place in order to create an interchange of experiences and cultures as well as to run art workshops and community creativities. Furthermore, the museum will launch a community educational program. The Mediterranean Biennale events will continue to be held and will be incorporated in the art program of the museum.
Further details regarding the museum and the exhibition HIWAR as well as an invitation to tour the museum will be announced later.
Almagol Manlibiba,2010
Bashir Borlakov. 2001
Jano Gausi 2008
Mehdi Georges Lahlou 2012
