Italian-produced cabinets safeguard the exhibits of the great archaeological collection of Jerusalem’s Israel Museum

The Goppion Laboratorio museotecnico is proud to announce the reopening, on the 25th July, of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In the presence of people representing the country’s most important offices, the opening will celebrate the conclusion of extension work applied to the entire museum complex as well as the restoration of the 1965 building – designed by Alfred Mansfeld and Dora Gan – which has become the archaeological fulcrum of an institution symbolising the State of Israel.

As part of the grandiose modernisation project which has affected an exhibition area of 280,000 square metres and cost 100 million dollars, Goppion has created the exhibit displays of one of the three main galleries of the Museum: the archaeological section named after Saidye and Samuel Bronfman documents the very beginnings of the Land of Israel from prehistory to the Islamic Period with incursions into the flourishing civilisations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece and Rome. Three hundred glass display cabinets produced by the Goppion Laboratorio Museotecnico from the designs of the London project design firm, Pentagram show the eight thousand objects from the archaeological collection.

Complying with the design project undertaken by Daniel Weil and John Rushworth, two hundred glass display cabinets are placed in the museum area as transparent modules that Pentagram has established in order to harmonise the new exhibit systems with the pre-existing building, in plain concrete. The intervention work - which has transferred the previous exhibit system into a rigorous geometrical system to the advantage of the objects being displayed – has necessitated the highest levels of precision with millimetre tolerance levels that have represented a constant challenge for Goppion during the entire process of production and installation. A further one hundred glass display cabinets, each one different from the other, have been placed at the centre of the rooms. The graphic effect achieved by the exhibit system which exalts to the utmost the volume and the features of the objects displayed is tangible proof of the ability of the Laboratorio to meet the demands of the client’s exhibit designs.

The modernisation of the entire museum site was awarded in 2007 to James Carpenter from the United States, together with the studios of Efrat-Kowalsky Architects and A. Lerman Architects in Tel Aviv.

The systems in the Bronfman wing are added to the Goppion glass display cabinets installed in 2004 in the same complex beneath the dome by Frederick Kiesler, one of the main features of the Temple of the Book, where visitors from the whole world over come to admire the Dead Sea Scrolls.