Meir Agassi

Meir Agassi (Kibbutz Ramat HaKovesh, 1947–Bristol, 1998) was an Israeli artist, collector, writer, poet, and art critic who lived in the UK since the early 1980s. Despite the physical distance, his work was deeply rooted in Israeli life and culture, while also drawing inspiration from Western artists, art movements, and trends. The retrospective Chalon LeChalom Al Yoffi (“Window to a Dream about Beauty”) is a chronological survey of the chapters in Agassi’s oeuvre, from the mid-1970s to his announcement of the Meir Agassi Museum in 1992. It traces the threads of autobiographical themes and self-representations that run through his work, alongside the tension between image and text that was central to his art and underscores his constant search for artistic identity.

Hints to his future “Museum” can be seen already in his early works and writing, some of which are presented here for the first time. In the various texts he published since the early 1980s, he often touched on the ideas of “display,” “exhibition,” and the “museum,” while offering a critical reflection on the curatorial act. In 1995, he published the pamphlet Some Notes Towards the Meir Agassi Museum, where he outlined the idea of his “Museum.”

Twenty-five years after his death, Agassi’s works touch on issues that are still relevant to the museum world: questions about modes of display, storage, marketing, branding, how the canon is determined, and about the artist-museum relationship. Alongside these, the exhibition also features documents and souvenirs from the archive of the museum he established. The incorporation of Michal Heiman, Orly Ziler, and Avshalom Suliman as guest artists turns the spotlight towards the ongoing interests in Agassi’s artistic legacy among artists, and scholars in different disciplines.