Beautiful Jaffa and its art galleries

Blog: Adventures, trials and wanderings of American-Israeli in New York City of Middle East

Tamar Zmora|Published: 06.30.10 , 08:28

A word to the wise: If you decide to take a day trip to Jaffa (or Yafo) to go gallery crawling, make sure you go early. The galleries, as I found out, tend to close at 4 or 5 pm, some even earlier. Most of them open at 10 am. Also, be aware that some are only open on certain days of the week. One gallery I passed was open three days a week. In short, check before going.

Once I arrived, the first gallery I checked out was a gallery that sold vintage Israeli posters, featuring old ads for Israeli products, movie posters - including James Dean's "Rebel Without A Cause" (Hebrew edition) and Hashoter Azulai (Ephraim Kishon's "The Policeman") - and scenes from yesteryear Israel.

The Farkash Gallery is definitely for the college aged crowd, with posters moderately priced at NIS 75 (about $19), not to mention the postcards at three shekels a piece. These posters would make great additions to a dorm room. In fact, as I walked in a mother and her high school/college aged daughter from the UK were leaving with a tidy sum of posters and postcards from the gallery.

As I bought my postcards, I asked the gallery owners more about their gallery, and apparently they have owned the gallery in Jaffa for about 30 years. However, the gallery itself was originally founded in 1948, and has been exhibiting Israeli art, including photography and paintings as well as posters ever since. Also good news, they ship!

Beautiful woven paintings at Art Nova (Photo: Tamar Zmora)

The next gallery was the Rachel Gera gallery, which specializes in jewelry with some small sculptures of Jewish figures and smaller ceramic works. The Jewelry - largely vintage silver pieces - seemed fairly heavy, with breast plate necklaces and a Gagaesque (Lady Gaga) head/face piece of jewelry. Very ornamental jewelry, much of it is not particularly functional for casual or formal events - unless you have a desire to be seen. Spotlight seekers, this may be your jewelry haven.

I walked into the Gabrieli Gallery afterward. There I found a collection of painted objects displaying female figures, scenes of Israeli landscapes and the seven species of Israel. Also in the back room were nice hand woven kippot (skullcaps) and tallitot (prayer shawls).

The next site was a bit too modern for my likings with the exception of a few pieces. Art Nova has some beautiful woven paintings. My favorite was of a group of dancers in movement in a wide array of bright colors. It was hit or miss otherwise for me with these paintings.

Mansohn House, next door to Art Nova, has an exhibition of painted works. A lot of the pieces have a stucco appearance to them - the paint is so heavily layered and gives off a splendid textured effect of largely Israeli sites.

Last but not least, I visited the Frank Meisler Gallery which has a unique display of caricature sculptures. The material the artist uses is Pewter metal and his subject matter tends to consist of comical portraits of professions from lawyers and doctors to gamblers (some would say these are synonymous). Meisler also created a dedication statue/ award for President Shimon Peres, who is pictured accepting the award at the entrance to the gallery.

Fluffy wedding dresses (Photo: Tamar Zmora)

Side Note: While in Jaffa you will notice a lot of blushing brides passing through and taking wedding photographs, which makes complete sense given the ancient port-city's charm with the sand colored stone walls, cobblestone roads and who could forget the view of the coastline.

Yet, something I have yet to understand in Israel is the wedding dresses. I mean what woman thought it was a good idea to design a dress that is skin tight and then becomes fluffy and dare I say ridiculous from the waist down?

The brides I have seen so far (which have been a lot), wear too much make up, too much glitter - it's as if Tinker Bell lost control of her wand and it malfunctioned all over these women, and have no concept of what best suits their bodies. Nobody wants to see lingerie tops teemed with a hoop shaped synthetic material circus style bottom. Vera Wang would cry at the sight of some of these dresses.

Brides aside, Jaffa is truly a wonderfully preserved ancient city and one that deserves to be visited, if not to see the galleries then to take in the sea air and walk the streets.