President's Message
Established in 1906 by artist Boris Schatz as the “Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts”, Bezalel has evolved into one of the world's most prestigious art schools. The name Bezalel is synonymous with more than 100 years of Israeli art, innovation and academic excellence. Bezalel’s unique strength stems from the numerous breakthroughs it has been responsible for and its ability to respond and adapt to cultural changes. It takes pride in its numerous generations of graduates – the spearhead of Israeli artists, designers and architects, in Israel and around the globe.
The Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design is, first and foremost, a group of talented, inspired and motivated artists and professionals. Both faculty and students are driven by a passion to create and by their dedication to quality and excellence. These two pillars of the Academy have placed Bezalel at the epicenter of Israel’s cultural discourse and at the forefront of its artistic scene, making it instrumental in shaping the country’s cultural identity.
Bezalel offers an extensive and highly diversified range of creative and professional activities and curricular programs: from crafts such as ceramics and glass, jewelry making and design generally, where age-old traditional techniques are preserved alongside workshops unparalleled anywhere else in the country, through painting, sculpture and photography – which have undergone radical changes in recent decades – to the latest and most sophisticated digital tools and resources in industrial design, screen-based arts, architecture and visual communication. Each department preserves the traditional knowledge, tools, materials and workshops collected over many decades, while using state-of-the-art software and cutting-edge technologies.
Bezalel trains and prepares its students for a life of achievement and excellence. Our students are expected to exhibit professional discipline and develop the ability to study their specialized subjects thoroughly and consummately, while always maintaining their intellectual curiosity and their desire to acquire a well-rounded education, to broaden their horizons and keep their minds open to the new and different. Our students receive a practical education of the highest order, along with a broad-based intellectual foundation in history, literature and philosophy, social studies and the fundamentals of scientific and technological thought. Through interdisciplinary, inter-departmental and 'basics' courses and the option of enrolling in courses in all of Bezalel's departments, our students are introduced to additional fields, outside of their specialized field, thereby enriching their artistic-design understanding.
The Bezalel Academy has an outstanding faculty as well as an extensive variety of expressive tools, providing our students with total freedom of choice and creative liberty, so that by the time they graduate, they will be able to effectively cope with the challenges presented by the global world of the 21st century and succeed in blazing their own unique and individual trails through the magical – yet demanding – fields of art, architecture and design.
Professor Arnon Zuckerman
President, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design