Mayer’s personal collection formed the core of the museum’s initial holdings.Īfter making some additions to the nascent collection herself, Salomons entrusted acquisitions to Richard Ettinghausen, a historian of Islamic art who served as chief curator at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery.Ĭonstruction of the museum started in 1965. An early benefactor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she’d studied under Leo Aryeh Mayer, then-head of the university’s Islamic art department (and the future namesake of the museum). Vera Frances Bryce Salomons-a British Jewish aristocrat, nurse and philanthropist, as well as a grandniece of the first Jewish lord mayor of London-founded the museum in the 1960s in hopes of fostering mutual understanding between Jews and Arabs. The story of how this treasure trove-one of the “three rarest clock collections in the world,” according to the museum-came together is key to understanding both why it was targeted and how its prized contents were eventually returned.
Perhaps the most unique feature of a museum otherwise dedicated to Islamic art is its collection of rare and valuable watches. It boasts a collection of some 4,000 objects, including jewelry, pottery, rugs, weapons and Qurans, and it welcomes tens of thousands of visitors annually. But Israel also houses hundreds of smaller specialized museums: a museum of taxation, a museum of Circassian culture, a museum commemorating a clandestine ammunition factory built in 1945, a museum featuring famous figures sculpted in edible marzipan, a museum of mechanical music and even a museum dedicated to paddleball.Īmid this tapestry of Israeli museums is the Museum for Islamic Art, which opened in 1974. The Israel Museum, Bible Lands and the Museum of the Jewish People are three of the country’s most prominent cultural institutions.
Roughly the same size as New Jersey, Israel has more museums per capita than any other country in the world. The heist seemed like a mystery that would never be solved-until a deathbed confession by a career criminal led to the recovery of almost all of the missing timepieces. In the two decades following the theft, authorities made little progress on the investigation. The crime had all the elements of a high-stakes drama: a mysterious theft, befuddled investigators, a romance that spanned decades and outlasted a prison sentence, and two bequeathments of valuable timepieces (among them a pocket watch commissioned for Marie Antoinette). The burglar stole 106 rare clocks worth tens of millions of dollars, then vanished without a trace. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem, entering the building under the cover of darkness. Forty years ago, on a spring night in April 1983, a thief bypassed security at the L.A.
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