Bezalel Academy’s triumphant return to downtown Jerusalem

“The city sees us, and we see the city,” said Prof. Adi Stern, the president of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, speaking about the new campus, as the academy hosted an open house for journalists on Wednesday. The event was held just ahead of Bezalel’s annual graduate exhibition, which will run from August 3-18 and is open to the public. This year, the exhibition will be held for the first time at Bezalel’s new Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Bezalel Campus. 

Nestled in the heart of the city on Zmora Street, abutting the Russian Compound and the Jerusalem Municipality, the impressive campus, which covers 42,000 square meters, was designed by the Japanese architecture firm SANAA, one of the leading architectural firms in the world and winner of the Pritzker Prize, in collaboration with Israel’s HQ Architects.

The building is made almost completely of three materials: Glass, Jerusalem stone, and cement, most of which is white and blends with the stone. But what visitors to the campus will notice first is the glass, as the building is virtually transparent, with classrooms, exhibits, hallways, and nearly every other part of the school visible from the street. Speaking at the event, Stern said it was important that the community be able to view the inner workings of the school, while at the same time, it allows the students to look outside and gain insight into their surroundings. 

A phenomenal location at the heart of Jerusalem

“This location is phenomenal,” Stern continued. “It’s the heart of the heart of Jerusalem.” The opening of this campus marks a homecoming for Bezalel, which was founded in 1906 by artist Boris Schatz. The oldest institution of higher learning in Israel, Bezalel is considered to be the country’s most prestigious art school, and it was originally located in the center of town.

But while the Architecture School is still in its historic building, about a 10-minute walk from the new campus, most of the school moved to Mt. Scopus in 1990, far removed from the energy and vitality of an urban setting, in a change that also impoverished the city’s downtown area, which lost its artistic, bohemian enclave.

Over a decade ago, it was announced that Bezalel would move back to the city center and this plan has finally come to fruition, as the new campus is now bringing Bezalel – there are 2500 Bezalel students, most of them undergraduates, as well as over 500 faculty members – back to the mainstream of the city’s life. 

STERN WENT on to speak about how the students and faculty “want to change and invest in their surroundings... We’re bringing oxygen to the city.” He discussed the school’s dynamism and the energy it absorbs from its location near the Old City and the city center. He compared its new home to such city-based universities as the Sorbonne in Paris.

The campus is six stories high and features three different levels on each floor – it’s difficult to describe, but students can constantly look up and down and see more classrooms, workshops, and art – and has also added public spaces, both in front of, and behind the building.

Stern was enthusiastic about the opportunities for dialogue among Jerusalem’s different populations – including Arabs and Jews, religious and secular – and during Wednesday’s event, a truly diverse group of Jerusalemites milled about and sat in the plaza outside the entrance. 

The building also features a total of 12 balconies, including one on the top floor that offers panoramic views in every direction, with gorgeous vistas of the Old City, the Russian Compound, and much of the city center. 

In the back, right next to the Russian Compound, sits a small building that once housed the commander of the British police who ran the prison in the compound and which has been renovated as part of the new campus. Stern said during the tour that eventually, the house might be turned into a café open to the public.

The small stone house, right next to the large glass structure presents an arresting contrast, as does the sight of the sleek, contemporary building alongside the Holy Trinity Cathedral with its ornate spires, which, in art-world jargon, “creates a dialogue” between the ancient and the contemporary. 

Inside, a full day wasn’t nearly enough to view the graduates’ exhibits and tour the departments of the school, which offers undergraduate tracks in screen-based arts, fine arts, architecture, ceramics and glass design, industrial design, jewelry and fashion, photography, visual communications, and visual and material culture, as well as postgraduate programs in five areas. 

Walking through the halls and seeing students’ projects in all these disciplines is to be dazzled by talent and inventiveness. In addition to subjects in which students can major, Bezalel features departments devoted to research and innovation, as well as a department called Bezalel X, which is devoted to teaching students how new technologies can inspire and enhance art and design.

Naturally, in the past few years, AI technology has been a focus of these departments, and a number of student projects using AI in different ways were on display. In some, students have engaged with different forms of AI to create graphic novels, while in others, visitors can type a sentence onto a screen, which is followed by an AI visual and audio response.

Students have also combined AI with biblical verses to create an exhibit that mixes traditional imagery shaped by a chatbot, and made a video in which two chatbots fall in love. But technology is not simply embraced, but rather, engaged with, under the wary and sometimes critical eyes of the artworks’ human creators. 

Stern addressed one particular aspect of life at Bezalel today – the faculty and students’ engagement with the current political situation – by insisting that the school was a place all points of view were welcome. While speaking of concerns raised by the proposed judicial reforms by the current government, he acknowledged the Bezalel community’s wariness about the new government. “Our role at Bezalel is not to tell people what to think, but to tell them to act,” he said, emphasizing that it was impossible for politics not to play a part in the work and life of the school.  

Summing up the diversity and achievements of the school, and looking ahead to what can be achieved in its new location, he said, “It’s a factory of creativity.”