From the chairman

Every year in the life of the Museum is a new and original creation, a creation involving research, development and application, requiring the museum’s team and its many partners, and based around a shared conviction that science is a common language across gender, class, age, and faith. 2020 was a particularly challenging year- one that led us into new and unfamiliar territory. From when we were forced to close the museum on March 15th until the end of the year, we were allowed to host visitors for only a total of 30 days.  After a few months of furlough, all the team returned, to work on “reinventing” our framework, and to focus on creating interactive educational online programs.

At the beginning of a new decade, we continue to be a hub for innovation and collaboration in science and technology culture. We continue to be led by our vision of being a home base for experiential learning, for “learning to learn”. We strive to develop and improve the museum’s various spaces- indoor, outdoor and virtual. We carry on curating and hosting new exhibitions, conveying knowledge, and providing enrichment for students and educators in all fields of science and technology. We continue to encourage excellence among the youth of all sectors of Israeli society, to offer a variety of programs suitable for all members of the family, and to stimulate dialogue and discussion. We maintain our commitment to be an “open space”- one that enables a fun and experiential process of research and learning- in Israel and in the international arena.

The great challenge we now face is the establishment of the Israeli Museum of Nature as part of an integrated campus with the Science Museum while creating connections between the various fields of science. The integrated campus will showcase natural phenomena and scientific principles alongside the various methodologies of discovery and insight, such as observations, hypotheses, experiments, and relevant developments in technology and industry. Presenting different scientific disciplines under one roof will allow us to demonstrate and explore the deep connections- as well as the surprising differences- that exist between the various scientific approaches in our search for universal truth.

We would like to thank the founders of the Museum, the Hebrew University and the Jerusalem Foundation, the Jerusalem Municipality, To the Bloomfield Family of Canada, the Museum's partners and supporters from the private and public sectors, and our colleagues in Israel and around the world. Without you we would not have been able to reach such heights. We hope to continue to work together to meet the pivotal social challenges that lie ahead.  

Shlomo Yanai,
Chairman of the Board