January 30, 2025 6:30PM - 8:00PM
Congregation Beth Israel is the first temple in Texas to display the ANU Museum’s new October 7th exhibit. The exhibit opening and reception will be on Thursday, January 30 at 6:30 PM in The Margolis Gallery.
About the Exhibit:
The aftermath of the horrific attacks on October 7, 2023, and the war that ensued led many Israelis to rethink the way we interpret our history, art and culture. The prevailing feeling is that even after the war ends, things will never be as they were and that the anger and profound grief will have a lasting effect on our lives.
In times of joy as well as in times of sadness art has always been a way for coping with reality. Artists uniquely respond to and portray the events of the day, interpreting and expressing our collective memory. In the words of Sofie Berzon MacKie, a survivor of the massacre in Kibbutz Be’eri and the curator of the local gallery that was burned to the ground, “Art articulates occurrences
and provides us with images.”
It has been said that “when the canons are heard, the muses are silent.” The need to survive is thought to quiet ideas, thoughts and creation. This notion seems to have turned on its head in this war, and we are experiencing an abundance of creativity in all art fields. As the canons are heard, the voices of the muses are emerging all the more clearly from deep down in the throat.
This exhibition does not intend to sum things up or offer an angle on Israeli art since October 7. It presents a particular situation and bears witness to the unique surge of creativity in Israeli society since the outbreak of the war.
