Suspicious Minds
Suspicious Minds is an unprecedented collaboration between an art museum and the Israeli Intelligence Service, Mossad.
Public Movement had curated an exhibition from the Tel Aviv Museum’s collection exclusively for the Israeli intelligence service. Ten artworks were removed from the museum's walls or storage vaults for the month-long exhibition at Mossad's headquarters. In place of the loaned works, audio stations have been set up throughout the Museum featuring recorded telephone conversations between Public Movement members, Museum staff, and Mossad figures. The conversations document segments from the work process and expose the mechanisms that shaped the collaboration. They also dwell on several key moments of historical junctions between art and intelligence.
Public Movement examines the national intelligence service from an artistic perspective, to study its methods and performative practices. At the same time, the group regards the Museum from a conspirative viewpoint, as an organization that mobilizes an international network of connections and agencies. Can Mossad’s repertoire of actions and figures be regarded as a museum collection? How can an art object act as an agent? What insights can be gained from the connection made between these organizations?
On February 8, 2023, while the artworks were packed and ready to be sent to Mossad headquarters, a message was received that the project was being shelved due to inter-organizational motives. To this day , the reasons for the cancellation of the exhibition remain a mystery. Once traces of the collaboration were removed, the exhibition was revealed as a cover story that allowed art to penetrate the restricted territories of the intelligence organization.
Concept: Dana Yahalomi, Yaelle Ben Ami, Nir Shauloff
Research: Yaelle Ben Ami
Text: Dana Yahalomi, Nir Shauloff
Project collaborator: Mossad, the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service
Public Movement consultant: Tal Yahas
Trial and Error: Uri Dicker, Avshalom Latucha, Gali Liebrider, Meshi Olinki, Amit Tine
Production assistant: Shira Sendik
Suspicious Minds was created within the exhibition “Imagine a Museum (or: The Remembering Body),” Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2023.
Curator: Ruth Direktor
'Suspicious Minds’ was made possible thanks to the support of:
Israel Lottery Council for Culture and Arts
Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts
The Philip and Muriel Berman Foundation
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Photo By: Kfir Bolotin
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Photo By: Kfir Bolotin
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F. Goess. Crowds viewing the American National Exhibition in Moscow, 1959. Downtown Gallery records, 1824-1974. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
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Photo by: Kfir Bolotin
