Early 2020 saw the onset of the coronavirus crisis globally. Out of a wish to get involved, to take actual action, to acknowledge the situation and respond to it through a plastic artwork, the management of the Friends of the Herzliya Museum decided, courtesy of the Prof. Michael Adler Foundation, to allocate approximately NIS 100,000 to support artists in Israel. Thinking of the museum collection in a historical perspective, and with the aim of establishing in it a valuable body of works that contend with this exceptional period, series of works on paper were purchased, which documented the course of a week under the restrictions of the pandemic: “Corona Diaries”.

In October 2020, an “open call” was issued, and shortly after convened the judging committee, whose members were: the artist Prof. Sharon Poliakine and the curators Tali Ben Nun, Ran Kasmy Ilan, Lilach Ovadia, and Dr. Aya Lurie. The committee examined more than four hundred proposals, and chose to purchase ten “Corona Diaries” by the following artists for the museum’s collection: Dov Or Ner, Anisa Ashkar, Raya Bruckenthal, Naomi Brickman, Izabella Volovnik, Noy Haimovitz and Tamir Erlich, Zvi tolkovsky, Lali Fruheling, Merav Kamel and Halil Balabin, and Elham Rokni. The purchase amount was divided equally among the ten selected series.

The series gave a complex expression to the zeitgeist, as a diary-like time capsule, capturing personal impressions and essential moods from the destabilizing period of the pandemic. A selection of these works can be found on this page.

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