Art and designחיים מאור

Haim Maor

Haim Maor is an Israeli artist, curator and professor emeritus of arts at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, whose work deals with memory, identity and the Holocaust.

born 1951Art on memory and the HolocaustTeaching art at Ben-Gurion UniversityCurating artists from the peripheryFounding editor of Studio journal

Occupation: painter, artist, curator
Founded: 1986)

Haim Maor was born in 1951 in Jaffa

Haim Maor was born in Jaffa in 1951 as Haim Binyamin Moshkovitz. His parents were Holocaust survivors of Polish Jewish descent who met on an immigrant ship on the way to the Land of Israel. He was named after his paternal grandfather, who was killed in Auschwitz.

He studied painting with the painter Edwin Salomon from 1961 to 1968. He served in the IDF as an investigator in the Military Police Investigations unit. From 1973 to 1976 he studied art and art teaching at the Midrasha School of Art in Ramat HaSharon.

His art examines his memory and identity against his family's experiences in the Holocaust and in Israel, often in mixed media installations. He represented Israel at the 12th Biennale for young artists in Paris in 1982 and exhibited at the Israel Museum and the Jewish Museum Berlin. He also wrote on art for the newspaper Al HaMishmar and was a founder and the first editor of the art journal Studio from 1989 to 1993.

Maor was a full professor in the Arts Department at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, which he helped found, until he retired. As curator of the university galleries, he showed many artists from the geographic and cultural periphery. He received the Sussman Prize from Yad Vashem in 1995 and the Arik Einstein Prize in 2018.