Prague Journal

Saturday, April 16, 2005.

After breakfast we took a walk, along with Danny and Ronit and Ayelet and Nativ, along the Beit Yanay beach on the Mediteranean, very close to their house in Kefar Vitkin. The weather is a bit cool, but it was sunny and very pleasant along the beach. In the afternoon we went to Tel Aviv, back to the Performing Arts complex, to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The museum was established in 1932, in the home of Tel Aviv’s first mayor, Meir Dizengoff. At its current location, the museum houses a comprehensive collection of classical and contemporary art, especially Israeli art, a sculpture garden and a youth wing. The Museum’s Israeli Art Collection reflects the history of art in the British Mandate of Palestine and the State of Israel. The collections represent some of the leading artists of the first half of the 20th century and many of the major movements of modern art in this period, including Fauvism, German Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Russian Constructivism, Surrealism, and French Impressionist, including some works by Chaim Soutine, and key paintings by Piccasso and Miro. Figuring prominently among the museum’s collection are works by several modern masters, including Monet, Pissarro, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, Bonnard, Matisse, Modigliani and Chagall. There are also several old masterpieces, among them the 1916 painting of Friedericke Maria Beer by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt and the Untitled Improvisation V, by the Russian master Wassily Kandinsky in 1914. I especially enjoyed the outdoor sculpture garden, which opened in 2002.
Danny’s older sons, Zemer and Jonathon, joined us for dinner – a nice reunion for us. We had last seen Zemer when he spent a year with his father in Houston when he was 11, and we had last seen Joni in 1979 (he was 2!) when Danny and Ronnie and both families visited us in Boise before Zemer was born. Joni was a pilot in the Israel Air Force for 8 years and both he and Zemer have just started their studies at the university. Joni cooked steaks on an outdoor grill, seasoned in the style he had learned during an extensive visit to Argentina. Only recently have grill-quality steaks been available in Israel, since they are not kosher! But now everything is available in Tel Aviv, which is one of the most secular cities.

posted by JWinn @ 10:47 PM