Course General Description

The Department of Fine Arts at the Bezalel Academy provides unique personal knowledge and the optimal conditions for personal progress through a sound technical, historic and theoretical foundation and through encounters with numerous active artists, some of whom are among the country's most senior artists, as well as with guest lecturers from abroad. These encounters with numerous and diversified viewpoints enable each student to develop an independent and critical perspective of his/her own and refine the forms of expression and formulation that best suit his/her creative output. The Department places the emphasis on the creative output and on how it is presented to the audience, as well as on the political implications associated with the artistic creation process and the presentation thereof.

School General Description

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design is an academic college of design and art located in Jerusalem, Israel. Established in 1906 by Jewish painter and sculptor Boris Schatz, Bezalel is Israel's oldest institution of higher education. It is named for the Biblical figure Bezalel, son of Uri (Hebrew: בְּצַלְאֵל בֶּן־אוּרִי), who was appointed by Moses to oversee the design and construction of the Tabernacle (Exodus 35:30). The art created by Bezalel's students and professors in the early 1900s is considered the springboard for Israeli visual arts in the 20th century. Bezalel is currently located at the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with the exception of the Architecture department, which is housed in the historic Bezalel building in downtown Jerusalem. In 2009 it was announced that Bezalel will be relocated to a new campus in the Russian Compound, as part of a municipal plan to revive Jerusalem's downtown. The new Bezalel campus is planned by the Tokyo-based award-winning architectural firm SANAA.