Coin­cid­ing with the 40th anniver­sary of the found­ing of the Israel Muse­um, the pub­li­ca­tion of this vol­ume is a trib­ute to the institution’s vast col­lec­tions of Fine Art, Judaica and Jew­ish Enthog­ra­phy and Archae­ol­o­gy, as well as its cel­e­brat­ed Youth Wing. Among the images includ­ed are works by Rem­brandt, Cezanne, Picas­so, and con­tem­po­rary artists from the Fine Arts depart­ment; the Dead Sea Scrolls and a 250,000 year-old fig­urine thought to be the world’s old­est art­work, both part of the com­pre­hen­sive hold­ings of the archae­ol­o­gy depart­ment; and a rare 15th cen­tu­ry Roth­schild Mis­cel­lany man­u­script. Three hun­dred beau­ti­ful col­or repro­duc­tions of the museum’s col­lec­tions are accom­pa­nied by com­men­tary from depart­ment cura­tors, writ­ten in lan­guage that is under­stand­able to both lay­men and scholars. 

Unusu­al for a muse­um pub­li­ca­tion, this cat­a­logue includes pho­tographs and infor­ma­tion about the edu­ca­tion­al activ­i­ties of its Youth Wing, which encom­pass­es exhi­bi­tions, an art school and muse­um edu­ca­tion pro­grams for all ages. These impor­tant pro­grams pro­vide rich expe­ri­ences that con­nect vis­i­tors to orig­i­nal artworks.