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Mar. 13, 2021
One of the biggest scandals in the history of Israeli museums has reached an unexpected happy ending. The attempt to sell some of the best artifacts of the L. A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in Jerusalem ended with an international compromise supervised by the High Court of Justice.
The splendid collection was made possible by a donation from the late Vera Salomons, who dreamed back in the ‘60s of bringing Jews and Muslims closer through art. Hundreds of incredibly beautiful and important pieces from the collection were at stake. Salomons established the museum and left specific instructions on how to run it, but those who pretended to speak in her name – an unknown foundation from Lichtenstein, with Israeli and Swiss trustees running it – tried to sell a hefty chunk of the collection to the highest bidder.