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Smadar Sheffi

Smadar Sheffi () is an art critic, researcher of art and culture, and a curator of contemporary art. She founded the Contemporary Art Center, Ramle – CACR (2019 - 2024) and was the Chief Curator. She specializes in curating exhibitions in historical venues, such as the Bialik House Museum in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem Artists House, Contemporary Art Center, Ramla - CACR, and the Pool of Arches, Ramla. Sheffi's bilingual blog of art criticism and notes on contemporary culture, The Window, has been active since 2012.

Biography

Smadar Sheffi holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her doctoral dissertation, "From Vienna to Jerusalem: Forgotten portraits by Grete Wolf Krakauer", was written under the direction of Gannit Ankori. Since 2018 Sheffi has been a lecturer at the COLLMAN - College of Management Academic Studies, Rishon Lezion. She is a past lecturer at the Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Institute for Israeli Art. Her research interests include representations of the Holocaust in contemporary art, Israeli art and Modernism.

Since 2013 Sheffi is the contemporary art curator of the Bialik Museum in Tel Aviv. In 2023, the book Art. Bialik. was published by the Municipality of Tel Aviv-Yafo on the occasion of the 150th centennial events marking the birth of the national poet. The book is a compilation of the exhibitions from 2013 to 2023 and an anthology of the writings by Bialik that inspired them.

Sheffi was the chief curator of the CACR – Contemporary Art Center Ramla, an art initiative she launched in 2019. The curatorial program she led welcomed difference and multiple viewpoints as core values, addressing issues of diversity and civil society as reflected in contemporary Israeli art.

Since 2024, she has been editing and curating an annual literature–art project in collaboration with the Institut français in Tel Aviv, focusing on the works of major figures in French literature: Georges Perec in 2024 and Marcel Proust in 2025. Each project comprises a group exhibition of contemporary Israeli art in dialogue with the featured author's work, alongside a public cultural program.

In recent years, she has curated several solo exhibitions for leading artists, including Yoav Weinfeld at the Eretz Israel Museum, Michal Heiman at Mishkenot Sha’ananim as part of the opening events of the International Writers Festival, and Merav Shin Ben-Alon at Max Liebling House in Tel Aviv.

Sheffi curated two exhibitions in 2023–2024 at the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery at the JCC, Manhattan: "Tales + Textiles" and "Cities and Valleys".

Continuing her research on contemporary Israeli art, Sheffi delivered lectures at the Summer University for Jewish Studies, Hohenems, Austria (“Food in Modern Israeli Art”); The Jewish Museum, Munich (“Reflection on the ‘other’: The image of the Arab in Israeli Art”); and at the American University, Washington DC at the conference Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel (“Portraying states of uprootedness in Israeli art”).

Sheffi is frequently interviewed in Israeli Media, was the art critic for Galei Zahal Radio from 2007 to 2023, and for 20 years was the art critic for leading Haaretz. She is the author of numerous catalog articles and gallery texts, an art consultant, and leader of in-depth Israeli and international art tours.

Curated exhibitions

Publications

  • 2013 - Catalog for solo exhibition by Beverly Barkat
  • 2015 - Catalog for solo exhibition by Eric Eliahou Bokobza – United Colors of Judaica
  • 2015 - Booklet for solo exhibition by Lisa Gross Turmoil
  • 2016 - Exhibition Catalog, Intricate Affinities: Recollections of Western Tradition in Local Contemporary Art, Petach Tikva Museum of Art
  • 2018 - Catalog of the exhibition, Grete Wolf Krakauer: From Vienna to Jerusalem
  • 2023 - The book Art. Bialik., Bialik Museum, Tel Aviv

Interviews and podcasts

References