Department of Visual and Material Culture
המחלקה לתרבות חזותית וחומרית
قسم الثقافة البصرية والمادة

Dr. Gal Hertz is the head of the Visual and Material Culture Department at Bezalel. He is a Germanist and a cultural researcher. His research creates a connection between the history and philosophy of science and cultural studies. He examines the rise of social disciplines around 1900 in the German-speaking world, such as criminology, sociology, sexology, law and psychiatry; This is from an affinity to popular culture, development of the press and media, theater, literature, and art. According to Hertz, the connecting point between seemingly unrelated fields is the establishment of a social order based on a new imagined normative base. Hertz holds a master's degree and a doctorate from the Cohn Institute at Tel Aviv University, pursued post-doctoral studies at the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL Berlin), and taught at both Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After that he was co-director of the research project "Humanities in Conflict Zones" at the Minerva Humanities center, and served as a research and teaching fellow at the Cohn Institute and the School of Cultural Studies at Tel Aviv University. In parallel to his work at the university, he is the editor of "MiNituk LeShiluv" (“From Disconnection to Integration”), an academic journal of the Ministry of Education Department for the Education of Children and At-Risk Youth, in which he is also involved in the processes of training teaching staff and in the development and implementation of the department's approach: therapeutic pedagogy.
Shanit Adam / Designer
Graduated from Bezalel Academy (Jewelry and Fashion department), and the Royal College of Art (Fashion department), specializing in footwear and accessories. Studied professional practices at London's Cordwainers LCF College.
In Her Designer/Maker Studio she creates as an independent brand, based on the principles of slow design, manufacturing locally long-lasting products. Co-founder of the Jerusalem Design Cooperative, a studio and home for a group of designers from various fields, working to promote initiatives and projects in the field of design in the city. Teaches in the Department of Industrial Design at the Bezalel Academy, lives in Jerusalem with her partner and two daughters.

Dr. Shir Aloni Yaari is an art historian specialising in modern and contemporary art. Her research focuses on theories and representations of the body, trauma and memory, on feminist art and thought, and on the dialogue between aesthetics and psychoanalysis. After completing a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, Shir continued teaching and leading an MA programme at the Courtauld. She has since worked as a curator at the Israel Museum, while teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Levinsky College of Education. She currently teaches in the Department of Visual and Material Culture at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem.

Dr. Lior Alperovitch is a lecturer on the 20th-century history of Europe and the Jewish people, who specializes in the history of the Holocaust and its commemoration in Israel, visual representation of the Holocaust, and halakhic rulings and religious observance during the Holocaust. He completed the bulk of his academic studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in the departments of history, Jewish history, Jewish thought, and international relations. He holds two master’s degrees – one in history and the other in Jewish thought – and a doctorate in history. His doctoral dissertation examined the relations between Israel and the Federal Republic of Germany and their impact on Holocaust commemoration in Israel during the first two decades of the State. He conducted his postdoctoral studies at the Strochlitz Institute for Holocaust Research at the University of Haifa. Lior is the head of the Center for Visualization of Holocaust Research at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem and teaches in the department of visual and material culture

Dr. Roni Amir received her Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 2009. She currently teaches in Bezalel and has been the head of the Academic Department at Emuna Ephrata – Academic College of Education for Art since 1996. Dr. Amir is an archaeologist and historian by training, who specializes in ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman She teaches courses in History of Art, Ancient Architecture, Mythologies and Archetypes as well as Visual Art. The author has published articles about Ancient Synagogues, ceramics from varied archeological sites, and Roman and Byzantine mosaics.

An art historian, specializing in modernism, postmodernism and contemporary art; senior lecturer at the Department of Visual and Material culture in Bezalel.
Dr. Aronov's research interests include avant-garde art, interrelations between cultures, social and political aspects of art. He focuses on artistic expressions of eschatological conceptions, of utopias and dystopias in modern and contemporary art.
Dr. Aronov received his MA degree in art history from the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Russia, and his Ph.D. in the history of modern art from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He authored two books on the art of Vasily Kandinsky, the pioneer of abstract painting, articles in catalogs for exhibitions and professional journals on the avant-garde art.
Selected bibliography:
- Kandinsky’s Quest: A Study in the Artist’s Personal Symbolism 1866-1907. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006.
- "Kandinsky the Spiritual Wanderer", in Kandinskij, The Wandering Knight: On His Journey Towards Abstraction, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia; Mudec, Museo delle Culture, Milan, 2017.
- "Kazimir Malevich: Experiments in Suprematist Poetry", Toronto Slavic Quarterly (University of Toronto), no. 47 (Winter 2014), pp. 323-344
- "The Pictorial Trans-rationalism of Kazimir Malevich". Aurora: The Journal of the History of Art (DePaul University, Chicago), vol. VIII. (2007), pp. 38-83.
Nurit Bar-Shai is an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of art, science and technology. Her research and artistic practice look into microbial social networks and communication systems, collective collaboration, emergence, in vitro ecology and biomaterial fabrications. As an activist and educator working with biological systems, she conducts experiments through creative collaborative inquiries and addresses the ethics and the emerging practices of Do-It-Yourself biology and Citizen-Science. Bar-Shai is the co-founder of Genspace NYC, community biotech lab in Brooklyn, NY, where she founded and directed the Arts and Culture program. Bar-Shai developed collaborative STEAM projects including the NYC Biome Map. She is a contributor to the Leonardo ebook: Meta-Life: Biotechnologies, Synthetic Biology, ALife and the Arts. She is the co-curator of the BioArt exhibition Cut/Paste/Grow and the co-organizer of Nodes & Networks, NYC. Her work is included and featured on the cover of the MoMA book BioDesign: Nature, Science, Creativity, and the Princeton book Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual. Her artwork was commissioned by Turbulence.org, won a Prix Ars Electronica and included in the collection of the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art at Cornell University.
My name is Venus Bargouth. I earned my BA, MA and PhD in English literature at the Hebrew University, where I currently teach. I am mostly interested in 18th-century British Romantic literature, with an emphasis on the works of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I love these authors because of their focus on the individual’s subjective experience and their attempt to capture in words the essence of human suffering. Moreover, defining the language of poetry as the language spoken by the lower orders of society, and portraying the lives of the rustic poor, Wordsworth and Coleridge brought literature closer to the cognition of ordinary people like you and me.
I believe in the power of education and in its ability to eradicate ignorance and thus reform society. Therefore, since the age of 18, I have devoted my time to teaching. I have taught various subjects to various populations and age groups in various places. I have also prepared students for the Tawjihi, Bagrut and Psychometric examinations. However, what I enjoy the most is teaching English language and literature, my fields of specialty. The way I see it, languages manipulate our thoughts, shaping our culture and identity. Literature, which is rendered in language, is a key to understanding how people think and behave. I have chosen to teach these subjects as I believe that once you master English, you master not only the language of academia but also the international language necessary for communication around the world. What I aim at is widening my students’ horizon and facilitating their integration in a newly emerging global community.
Ory Bartal is the head of the Department of Visual and Material Culture in Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. Bartal is a Japanologist focusing on contemporary Japanese design including industrial and fashion design as well as manga and visual communication. Bartal completed his M.B.A. in the Department of International Business Administration at the Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo in a joint project with the Carnegie Mellon University in the USA He then studied advanced studies toward M.Des. in the Industrial Design department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He completed his Ph.D. at the School of Cultural Studies at the University of Tel Aviv, specializing in contemporary visual culture. His book “Postmodern Advertising in Japan: Seduction, Persuasion and the Tokyo Art Directors Club” was published in 2015. The book deals with Japanese advertising, the connection between aesthetics and contemporary consumer culture and the blur boundaries between branding and art. His second book “Critical Design in Japan: Material Culture, Luxury and the Avant-Garde” published in 2020. This book presents the post-war designers that made decisions and created artifacts that radically altered and reshaped the course of Japanese design history. The book shows how their avant-garde design involves an encounter between postmodern aesthetics, critical theory, and new economic rules operating as a critical sociopolitical agent.
Prof. Avner Ben-Zaken is a historian of science who focuses on the question how science transverses cultural boundaries? He is the author of three book and dozens of articles. In Bezalel, Ben-Zaken teaches seminars on the "Visualization of Science" and on the "Material Culture of Science", in which he challenges and undermines the cultural boundaries between the textual culture of science and the visual culture of arts.

Dr. Itzhak Benyamini teaches at Bar-Ilan University and at Bezalel Academy. He is editor of Resling publishing. Authored the following books in Hebrew: What Does the Man Want? (2003), Paul and the Birth of the Sons' Community (2007), Lacan's Discourse (2009), The Laughter of Abraham (2011), and Subject-Screen (2018); in English: Narcissist Universalism (2012), A Critical Theology of Genesis (2016).

Tamar Berger, Senior Lecturer, The Department of Architecture, the Urban Design Master's Degree Program, Oman - the Heredi Extension and the Visual & Material Culture Department. Teaches and writes on issues of space, space and culture, urbanity and modernity in general in the Israel context. Her books: "Dionysus at Dizengof Centre" (Hakibbutz Hameuchad), "Issues in the Theory of Space" (The Open University), "In the Space Between World and Toy" (Resling) and "Autotopia" (Hakibbutz Hameuchad). More articles, essays and travelogues at www.tamarberger.com.

Roi Boshi is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History of Art Department at Tel Aviv University. M.A. From The Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University (Summa cum laude). B.F.A. from the Photography Department of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem.
He is a lecturer at Department of Visual and Material Culture at Bezalel, lecturing on the history and theory of photography.

Exhibitions curator, lecturer and writer on various artistic subjects. Lectures In Bezalel about the History of Ceramics. Worked for 20 years in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem mostly as an curator of interactive exhibitions at The Ruth Youth Wing. Works as a free lancer mainly as curator of Israeli History exhibitions. Selected exhibitions: Dosh, A Caricaturist 1921 - 2000, Eretz Israel Museum, Ramat Aviv, 2006, Childhood paintings of Israeli Artists, Ramat Gan's Art Museum, 2015, Visitors center of the National Archives, 2019. Today curates The Knesset (parliament) Museum and the permanent exhibition of the State Comptroller and Ombudsman in Jerusalem.

Orna Coussin (born in Paisley, Scotland, 1967) is a writer and writers' mentor in Israel.
After about 20 years of writing culture commentary for Haaretz Daily and other Israeli publications she began dedicating her writing to personal essays, memoirs and short stories – seven of her books have been published to date.
In 2009 she has received the Prime Minister Prize for Hebrew Writers.
"Climbing That Mountain, or: How to Write" (Achuazat Bayit Publishers, 2015) is a writer's guide and an essay about writing, and was an Israeli best seller.
Coussin lives in Tel Aviv with her partner Michal and their two daughters Naomi and Yael.

I am the English coordinator at Bezalel and the Haredi branch of Bezalel and have been teaching at Bezalel since 2014.Before that I was the vice- principal of a Jerusalem High School. All my working life, 38 years, I have been teaching English as a foreign language.
I came on Aliyah in 1984 from England and am married with 4 children. My eldest daughter graduated from the architecture department at Bezalel in 2018 and my youngest daughter will start studying at Bezalel this coming year. I have always had a passionate interest in art and design and have attended many history of art courses at the Israel Museum. In my free time, I love visiting art and design museums and collecting catalogues from exhibitions that I have seen.
My first degree was in Psychology and Statistics from the University of Salford, Manchester and my second degree in Educational Psychology from The Hebrew University. I have also completed a teacher training course in English as a Foreign Language.
I am looking forward to welcoming three new lecturers to the English Unit and to the challenge of redesigning all the English courses so that they will be in line with the new CEFR European regulations.
Illustrator, lecturer and curator, artistic editor and comic book artist, engages in writing that expresses childhood motifs significantly. Lecturer in the Department of Screen Arts, and the Department of Visual and Material Culture.
Farber is a graduate of the Visual Communication Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, an award winner and a Sharet Foundation scholarship in undergraduate studies. His final project, which dealt with grotesque illustrations of political figures, was purchased shortly thereafter and formed the basis for the first season of “The Harzufim”, the first Israeli political satire program whose protagonists were puppets, and aired on Channel 2. He also received an excellence scholarship in graduate studies in screenwriting at Tel Aviv University.
He illustrated children's books and in many magazines. He initiated and edited the bestselling "Still Optimistic - Artists Painting Dudu Geva", published by Zamora-Pavilion, and curated the accompanying exhibition at the Holon Institute of Technology Gallery, with 120 illustrators and one Dudu Geva. He has also curated and exhibited in numerous exhibitions.
He has won numerous awards, including the Rabinowitz Foundation for the Arts, the Lottery Council for Culture and the Arts, and a prize and first place at the Illustration Week in Tel Aviv. In recent years, he has edit, illustrated, and published the graphic trilogy "Isaac's Notebooks", based on the diary of his late grandfather.

Gai Farchi is a scholar of literature and cultural studies. He currently works on the material turn in the humanities, examining how objects, trash, memory and nostalgia are dealt with in literature through the lens of ecocriticism and posthumanist theory. His doctoral dissertation discusses posthumanism in contemporary literature in French. His work has been published in journals such as French Forum and French Studies.

Design researcher and lecturer in the Bachelor and Masters programs at Bezalel since 2011.
Founder of the "Studio for thinking" and "The Classroom" -a design-teaching research lab.
Specializes in conceptual consultation to artists and designers, and in curating writing for the art and design exhibitions.
Author of "The Book of Yoel Hoffmann"(March 2020, Resling Pub. Tel Aviv). Published articles in research periodicals and anthologies.
A silversmith and jewelry designer, creating both conceptual and commercial jewelry, displaying at exhibitions and biennales in Israel and around the world.
Holding a Ph.D. degree and an M.A. degree Summa cum laude in Hebrew literature from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev; an M.Des., Summa cum laude from Bezalel and a B.A., Cum laude in interdisciplinary Art from Tel Aviv University.

Lyat Friedman has completed undergraduate studies at Ben Gurion University in behavioral sciences and received a master’s degree from New York University, in philosophy.
She has obtained a PhD, in philosophy from DePaul University, Chicago, where she wrote a dissertation on Plato’s dialogues. Before returning to Israel, she participated in Jacques Derrida’s seminar at University of California, Irvine, for four years. Upon her return, she taught for five years at the Philosophy, Comparative Literature and Gender Studies Programs, Tel Aviv University and for ten years, was a faculty member at the Philosophy Department and Gender Studies Program, Bar Ilan University. In the last eight years, she serves as chair of the M.A. Program in Policy and Theory of the Arts, Bezalel Academy.
She specializes in Continental Philosophy, Phenomenology, Cultural Studies, Psychoanalytic Theory, Gender Studies, Art Theory and Critical Thinking. Her book, In the Footsteps of Psychoanalysis was published in 2013, in Hebrew. She has published many articles in both Hebrew and English; she is a member of the Continental Philosophy Seminar; together with Galit Wellner, Phd, she has edited the second issue of Notebooks in Continental Philosophy (2020). Her next book, Transformative Criticism, is in process.

Iddo Ginat is an Israeli architect, curator and researcher, graduated from Bezalel, holds a master's degree from Harvard University, and is in the final stages of his doctorate at the Cohen Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. He lectures both in the Department of Architecture and the Department of Visual Culture. Iddo was co-curator of the exhibition "Land.Milk.Honey: Animal Stories in Imagined Landscapes" which represented Israel at the Architecture Biennale in Venice 2021. The book published in conjunction with the exhibition won the Deutsches Architekturmuseum’s Architecture Book Award for 2021. In recent years Iddo has focused on historical and architectural research, and his areas of interest include history of Israeli architecture, modernism, and the relationship between technology and ecology in the design of the built environment. Among his published works in recent years are articles for exhibition catalogs such as "Bodyscapes" at the Israel Museum (2020) and "Yasky & Co.” at the Tel Aviv Museum (2016).
Photo Gallery

From the exhibition ׳Land.Milk.Honey׳, the Israeli Pavilion at the 17th Architecture Biennale, Venice.
Curators: Dan Hasson, Ido Ginat, Rachel Gottesman, Yonatan Cohen, Tamar Novick (Photo: Iddo Ginat)

Dr. Renard Gluzman is a game designer and a senior lecturer at Shenkar College and a research fellow at the Haifa Center for Mediterranean History. His recent publications include Venetian Shipping from the Days of Glory to Decline, 1453–1571 (Leiden: Brill, 2021); "Ship biographies as a form of microhistory," in Venezia e il senso del mare. Percezioni e rappresentazioni, eds. Ermanno Orlando, Maurice Aymard (Venice: Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, VSLA, 2022); id. & Pnueli, Vered, “Fear, Greed, And the Exclusion of the ‘Local’ in the Formation of a Global Gaming Industry in Israel,” in Proceedings to DiGRA 2022: July 7-11, Kraków, Poland.
Photo Gallery

'Piposh' game, 1999

'Piposh' game, 2021

'In the Interest of Ratings' game, 1997

Designer, artist and lecturer.
Owns a fashion and jewelry design studio, presenting in Israel and around the world.
Senior Lecturer in the Jewelry and Fashion Department and Visual and Material Culture Department.
Goren is an outstanding graduate of the Jewelry and Fashion Department at Bezalel.
Goren worked as a head designer in Paris (2004-2008) and presented in six fashion weeks.
Finished his doctoral studies at the Sorbonne in Paris (2013)
Established his studio (2009) and since then has been developing material and design research that combines a variety of disciplines.
The main challenge is to combine and connect material technologies used in jewelry and metalwork with clothing and textile technologies, in order to allow each material to integrate organically into the other material, creating a single unit with a new and unique material identity.
Goren participates in exhibitions in Israel and around the world.
participated in the first biennial of design and art (2020) at the Eretz Israel Museum. Presented a solo exhibition at the “Periscope” Gallery (2019) Tel Aviv. Tow group exhibitions at the CICA Museum (2019) in South Korea. At the Judaica Biennale in Jerusalem (2018) at a group exhibition at the Islamic Museum (2018) Jerusalem. And Paris Fashion Week (2016).

Associate curator of illustrated children’s books, Head of the Illustration Library, the Ruth Youth wing of art education, the Israel museum, Jerusalem.
Curator, researcher, and lecturer. Areas of specialty: history of illustration, history of children’s illustrated books, curatorship of illustration exhibits as & family exhibitions. Teaches at Bezalel and Shenkar college of art and design.
Serves as the chair of the jury of Israel museum Ben Yitzhak illustration award for a children’s book. Curator of many illustration exhibitions as well as two major youth wing exhibitions: Happy Birthday (2015) and Cats & Dogs (2017) Curator the Israeli pavilion in Bologna (2014).
Consultant and book selection committee member PJ library
Holds a MA in children’s literature, Simmons university and a BA in History of art & Education, Hebrew university, Jerusalem.
Design Thinking and Strategic Design Lecturer
BA History of Art and Set Design for Film, Television and Theater, University of Haifa.
MDes Industrial Design University of Technology, Auckland New Zealand.
Strategic Product, Brand and Experience designer. Expert in innovation processes and Design Thinking.
Strategic Experience Design independent consultant, formerly VP of Marketing and Product Development at Strauss Group, Head of Design and Innovation at El Al and Director of the Air New Zealand Aerospace Design Studio.