Elisheva Cohen

Elisheva Cohen was born in 1911 in Frankfurt

Elisheva Cohen was born in Frankfurt to an Orthodox Jewish family. Her father traded in pearls and precious stones. She went to an Orthodox school for Jewish girls and then to a general public high school.

She studied art history at universities in Munich, Frankfurt, Zurich, Heidelberg and Marburg. Her studies ended with the rise of the Nazis, and she left Germany in 1933. That year she married Chaim Cohn in Strasbourg, and they moved to Jerusalem, where they had 2 children.

After her divorce, Mordechai Narkiss asked her to organize the graphics collection of the Bezalel National Museum, where she began working in 1956. She set up a cataloging system and curated a first exhibition of Rembrandt's biblical works. She took part in planning the Israel Museum, which absorbed the Bezalel museum.

In 1968 she became Chief Curator for the Arts, while also serving as Curator of Prints and Drawings, until she retired in 1975. She then advised the museum, sat on its board and helped turn Anna Ticho's home into a museum branch. She chaired Israel's Council of Museums until her death in 1989.