Keshet Award for Contemporary Art, founded by the Bar-Gil Avidan Family
The Keshet Award for Contemporary Art is presented every two years, over a period of ten years since 2016, to an Israeli artist, in support of one exhibition out of the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art’s annual program. The selected exhibition is curated by an international curator, in a bid to foster a significant dialogue that may lead to the forging of cultural bridges and new professional ties, thereby supporting and encouraging Israeli art. The Keshet Award for Contemporary Art is the first prize to be awarded by the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, and we are most grateful to Keren Bar-Gil and Ran Avidan for their generous and significant donation.
The Keshet Award 2021
The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce that the artist Haviv Kaptzon is the 2022 Recipient of the Keshet Award for Contemporary Art, founded by the Bar-Gil Avidan family.
The committee members of the 2021 Keshet Award: Keren Bar-Gil, Lea Mauas, Udi Edelman, Dr. Housni Alkhateeb Shehada and Dr. Aya Lurie.
Among the winning reasons: Kaptzon proposed a cohesive interdisciplinary approach that combines a futuristic utopian vision with a sober cultural view of the present. The project makes skillful use of an original visual lexicon that draws on popular culture and classical art, and distills a poetic language filled with humor, that places existential questions at its center. The proposed exhibition is based on a fictional play by the artist, which wonderfully combines emotive expressions and the macabre, and mixes the philosophical with the mundane. The exhibition will include video works, sound, treated objects, and drawings. Kaptzon’s solo exhibition is scheduled to be open during 2024 at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art.
Haviv Kaptzon (b. 1983) holds a master’s degree in art from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and a bachelor’s degree in art from Shenkar – Engineering, Design, and Art, Ramat Gan. He has held solo exhibitions at Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Kav 16 Gallery, Tel Aviv; the Artists’ Studios, Tel Aviv; and Alfred Gallery, Tel Aviv. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at the Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon; Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Ashdod Art Museum. Kaptzon has received exhibition grants from the Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts, Tel Aviv; First Prize in the Israeli Video Art and Experimental Film Competition, Lia van Leer Award, at the Jerusalem Film Festival; the Young Artist Award of the Ministry of Culture; and the Margaret and Sylvan Adams Prize for Young Artists. He is also a founding member of the Anti Mehikon Art Collective.
Haviv Kaptzon, Photo: Danny Finkenthal
The Keshet Award 2019
The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Yael Frank as the 2019 recipient of the Keshet Award for Contemporary Art, founded by the Bar-Gil Avidan family.
Members of the professional committee that selected the final candidates for this year’s award include Dr. Aya Lurie (Chairperson), Director and Chief Curator of Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art; curator Edna Mosenson, curator Sally Haftel, curator Rula Khoury and artist David Adika; Keren Bar-Gil, award’s founder and donor; Vered Gadish, award’s producer.
Yael Frank’s exhibition will be curated by Mr. Paul Hobson, director of Modern Art Oxford in Oxford, England. Hobson has over 20 years of experience in senior roles at the Contemporary Art Society, The Showroom, Serpentine Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts in London. He is the director of Modern Art Oxford since 2013. The museum has been presenting inspiring exhibition of contemporary art for more than 50 years. It was founded in 1965 and in 2002 changed its name to its current one to better reflected a dynamic, changing program of temporary exhibitions, many are ground-breaking, rather than a museum with a permanent collection. Modern Art Oxfords considers today to be one of UK’s leading contemporary art organizations. During Hobson directorship the museum had solo shows by Barbara Kruger, Jeremy Deller and Kiki Smith to name a few.
Following in-depth studio visits and meetings with the award candidates, Hobson selected Yael Frank and her proposed project. He stated that: “Yael Frank has a well developed and reliable project, with a clear concept. She creates playful yet complex metaphors and situations that she complicates through absurdist juxtaposition. Her work has energy, charisma and a sense of fun. Frank explores the shift between text and meaning, sculpture and architecture, object-relations and affects in the 21st century.” Frank solo show will open on November 2020 at Herzylia Museum of Contemporary Art.
Yael Frank (born 1982), lives and works in Tel Aviv. holds MFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and BA from Copper Union, New York. She is the recipient of 2017 ‘Ingeborg Bachmann Scholarship established by Anselm Kiefer’ – Wolf Foundation, and is a resident at Artport residency program for 2019-2020. Over the last years she received grants and support from Artis, Ostrovsky Fund, Rabinovich Foundation and Mifal HaPayis. She exhibited in group shows in Israel and abroad – at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, FuturDome Milan, House of Art Brno, The Israeli Center for Digital Art Holon, Petach Tikva Museum, Zachenta National Gallery of Art Warsaw, to name a few, and solo show at Artists Workshop Tel Aviv, Hezi Cohen Gallery Tel Aviv and Labyrinth Gallery Lublin.
Paul Hobson, Photo: Edmund Blok
The Keshet Award 2018
The Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Hila Amram as the 2019 recipient of the Keshet Award for Contemporary Art, founded by the Bar-Gil Avidan family.
Members of the professional committee that selected the final candidates candidates for this year’s prize include Dr. Aya Lurie (Chairperson), Director and Chief Curator of Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art; artist Prof. Deganit Berest; Yuval Beaton, Chief Curator of the Ashdod Art Museum; artist Prof. Sharon Poliakine; curator Dr. Roy Brand; Keren Bar-Gil, the prize’s founder and donor; Vered Gadish, the prize’s producer.
Hila Amram’s exhibition will be curated by Dr. Małgorzata Ludwisiak, director of the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw. Ludwisiak is an art historian, critic, and curator of dozens of one-person and group exhibitions. She has served, among others, as deputy director and senior curator at Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz; artistic director of the Lodz Biennale; and chief curator of international contemporary art festivals and events in Poland.
Following in-depth studio visits and meetings with the prize candidates, Ludwisiak selected Hila Amram and her proposed project. Amram’s project combines marine nano-biological research and the pirate activity of hackers who pursue this field on the Internet. This subject matter will also inform her 2020 exhibition at the Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.
Hila Amram (born 1976), lives and works in Tel Aviv. She is a graduate of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and of the Advanced Post-Graduate Fine Arts Program at the Midrasha School of Art, Beit Berl College. She has held one-person shows at the Artists’ Studios, Tel Aviv; Dana Gallery, Kibbutz Yad Mordechai; and the Museum of Israeli Art, Ramat Gan. She has participated in group shows in numerous venues, including the Petach Tikva Museum of Art; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Eretz-Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; Glass Museum, Venice, Italy; and the State Darwin Museum, Moscow. Amram is the recipient of grants from the America–Israel Foundation; the Israel Lottery Council for the Arts; and the Rabinowitz Foundation for the Arts.
Hila Amram, Photo: Ilanit Shamia
Keshet Award 2016
A professional committee of artists, curators, and scholars has selected ten artists as candidates for this year’s prize. The committee members include the prize’s founder and donor, Keren Bar-Gil; the curator Yona Fischer; the artist Prof. Yitzhak Livneh; the artist Zoya Cherkassky; and the art researcher and curator Dr. Yael Guilat. Following visits to the candidates’ studios and indepth conversations with them, the curator Louis Grachos finally chose Guy Goldstein and his proposed project for this first exhibition. Much to our delight, the connection between the artist and the curator has also resulted in an invitation extended to Goldstein to exhibit his works at The Contemporary Austin in 2019.
Guy Goldstein was born in 1974, and lives and works in Tel Aviv. He has a bachelor’s degree from the NB Haifa School of Design and a master’s degree from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem. Goldstein is known as a sound and installation artist, whose unique language translates, through innovative technological means, visual image into sound and vice versa.
The curator Louis Grachos has had an extensive career in the field of contemporary and modern art in the United States. He has curated exhibitions for many artists, including Clyfford Still, Sol LeWitt, Chuck Close, and Francis Bacon, and among contemporary artists Monika Sosnowska, Jim Hodges, Ryan Gander, and many others.
He served as the director of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico. In his current position as the director of The Contemporary Austin he has spearheaded its significant development and expansion.
Guy Goldstein, Photo: Amanda Hestehave
Louis Grachos, Photo: Leonid Furmansky
