"Art, education and social activism in Israel - a personal report" with Dr. Sigal Barkai

Please join the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies on Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 12:00PM EST / 7:00PM ILT for a virtual talk, Art, education and social activism in Israel - a personal report with Dr. Sigal Barkai, arts researcher and curator, National Supervisor of Art Education, Israeli Ministry of Education. Kibbutzim College of Education Technology and the Arts, Tel Aviv.

"In the lecture I will talk about my experience as the Chief Supervisor of Art Education in Israel (2011 onwards) and about a study conducted in collaboration with Dr. David Pariser of Concordia University, which analyzes the development of curricula in the Israeli education system in various generations since the first Zionist settlement in the early twentieth century until today. We show a graduate shift from Eurocentrism to multicultural sensitivity and social diversity, with an emphasis on Jewish and Arab cultures originating in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In the second part of the presentation I will detail how this cultural sensitivity is reflected in my own curatorial practice, especially in the exhibition “Trespassing” I curated in 2020." - Dr. Sigal Barkai

Dr. Sigal Barkai is a researcher and curator of contemporary Israeli art. Since 2011 she is the Chief Supervisor of Art Education in the Israeli Ministry of Education. Her PH.D dissertation, titled: "Stage for Masculinities: Representations of Israeli soldiers in the theater" was submitted to the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University, 2012. Her book by that title was published in Hebrew at the Open University Press, Israel in 2019. She was a curator at the Petach-Tikva Museum of Art (2005-2009) and since then she is working as an independent curator in various venues. She was the head of the Visual Literacy - Arts Education Graduate Program and the Curatorial Studies Program at the Faculty of Arts, Kibbutzim College, Tel-Aviv, Israel (2013-2017) where she works as a lecturer in art education and visual art. Dr. Barkai was the winner of the 2017-18 Post-Doctoral Fellowship award in the Azrieli Institute of Israel Studies where she conducted research on Neo-Diasporic Israeli artists.