Yasha Grobman, an architect and researcher, has been appointed director general of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, ending a prolonged leadership crisis. He succeeds Suzanne Landau, who stepped down after serving as interim director since September 2023. Grobman, a former dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, has been publicly critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and has spoken at protests in Haifa opposing the war in Gaza. His appointment follows a discreet search by a board-appointed committee and comes as the museum faces financial strain, reduced hours, and a decline in international activity.
The appointment matters because the Israel Museum is one of Israel’s most prominent cultural institutions, and its leadership has been unstable since James Snyder’s departure in 2016—Grobman will be the sixth director since then. His selection also occurs amid heightened political scrutiny of cultural institutions in Israel and ongoing debates about the role of museums during a period of national crisis, making his leadership both a stabilizing move and a potentially contentious one given his political activism.