A Brief History of Humankind
among the artists: Mirosław Bałka
till 2 January 2016
The Israel Museum
This exhibition, inspired by Yuval Noah Harari’s bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, invites the public to a journey exploring some of the crucial moments in the history of humankind through pivotal objects from the Museum’s encyclopedic collections. Spanning a timeline of hundreds of thousands of years, the items on view include archaeological objects dating to the dawn of civilization shown side-by-side with cutting-edge works of contemporary art.
The exhibition’s narrative, articulated as three major chapters, revolves on three significant turning points in the evolution of human civilization: the Cognitive Revolution — the advent of language and communication, which enabled Homo sapiens to survive and form complex societies; the Agricultural Revolution — humanity’s first steps towards the evolution of settled civilization, laying the foundations for modern society; and the Industrial Revolution — a time of rapid scientific and technological developments that ushered in the contemporary era. Within this framework, the exhibition touches on some critical existential questions, such as: Why did Homo sapiens survive and gain mastery of the world? Why do we need laws and why were coins invented? How did the industrial revolution influence our concepts of time and space? And — perhaps most intriguing — what does the future hold in store for humankind? The scientific revolution set in motion a process that radically improved the living conditions of the human species, but what will the archaeologists of tomorrow find and think about our present?
Removed from their natural historical context in the galleries, the objects on view bear vivid testimony to the most important phases in the evolution of humanity, their unique qualities shedding light on universal phenomena. The objects’ significance is amplified, emphasized, and reinterpreted by their juxtaposition with contemporary artworks, creating new, thought-provoking connections that invite us to reflect on our past in the hope of gaining a better understanding of our present and our future.