2025

40 artist grants were awarded in 2025, to the following artists:

Amir Nave • Anat Ikar Shoham • Anisa Ashkar • Avital Cnaani • Chana Anushik Manheimer • Dana Darwish • Elena Stelzer • Esther Cohen • Ester Shneider • Gabriella Willenz • Gilad Ratman • Haimi Fenichel • Haviv Kaptzon • Hila Laviv • Karam Natour • Keren Geller • Lee Yanor • Mai Daas • Marcel Tehila Bitton • Mark Yashaev • Maya Zack • Meir Tati • Miri Segal • Netai Halup • Noy Haimovitz and Tamir Erlich • Olga Oreshnikov • Omri Danino • Orit Akta • Orly Azran • Rami Maymon • Ronen Zien • Roni Hajaj • Ronit Mirsky • Ruti de Vries • Shay Id Aloni • Tamar Nisim • Tchelet Ram • Uri Zamir • Zohar Gottesman •

One artist expressed her will to remain anonymous.

Members of the evaluation team:

Ahmad Canaan • Amera Zayan • Ashraf Fawakhry • Bar Yerushalmi • Dana Yahalomi • Dr. David Sperber • David Wakstein • Dr. Doron Lurie • Doron Rabina • Ella Amitay Sadovsky • Fouad Agbaria • Joshua Simon • Jossef Krispel • Hadas Maor • Hanna Qubty • Dr. Irit Carmon Popper • Leah Abir • Marie Shek • Maya Bamberger • Nardeen Srouji • Nir Harmat • Penny Hes Yassour • Raya Bruckenthal • Ruti Sela • Sally Heftel Naveh • Sharon Ya’ari • Smadar Keren • Tali Kayam • Tami Katz-Freeman • Prof. Uriel Miron • Yaacov Mishori • Yaniv Shapira •

1,400,000 NIS have been awarded as grants in 2025.

Field Research

Dr. Reem Ghanayem

Researcher, writer, and lecturer on art and culture

Research topic:

Hybridity and its representation in art in Arab society in Israel

The research examines ways of expressing hybrid identity in the work of five Palestinian artists who are citizens of Israel and work in a variety of mediums: drawing, painting, video, and animation. It focuses on the tension between tradition and innovation, and the question of representing personal and collective identity in Arab society in Israel. During the year, interviews were conducted with the artists, and visual and narrative material was collected for analysis. As of the end of 2025, three of the five chapters have been written. The research article is expected to be published in 2026.

The artists who participated in the study, in alphabetical order:

Ahmad Khalifa

A visual artist specializing in digital animation and stop-motion. His work examines representations of queer, marginal, and urban identities from a critical perspective on the limitations of the body and cultural space. His works draw inspiration from pop culture, neurosis, and marginal street scenes.

Bashir Abu-Rabia

A painter born in Segev Shalom. His paintings reveal fragments and moments of pause: wounded bodies, broken lines, and images of nature that carry layers of memory and longing. He moves between figurativeness and abstraction, avoiding statement, and choosing instead to delicately sketch consciousness and emotion.

Mia Masri

A visual artist and educator from Kafr Qara. Her works combine line, text, and color, and are rooted in personal womanly memory. She creates spaces that combine the language of painting with the written word, using Arabic letters as a means of constructing a space of belonging, wandering, care, and listening.

Raida Adon

A multidisciplinary artist – video artist, photographer, and actor. Her work deals with the female body as a site of memory, displacement, and struggle, using layered visual spaces, silence, and charged symbols. The women in her works move between injury and freedom, silence and a scream.

Samah Shhadeh

An artist specializing in drawing, born in 1987, Samah Shehadeh stands out among the younger generation of Palestinian artists in Israel. Her visual language is based on charcoal and positions the female body as a focal point of memory, fracture, and belonging. Her works strive to construct a visual discourse that is both personal and political, between silence and protest.

Rights and Policy

Regulating Art in the Public Sphere

The Plumas Foundation continued its policy project in conjunction with the Association of Plastic Artists in Israel. This year, the project focused on regulating the field of art in Israel’s public sphere. At the heart of this initiative is the promotion of the “Percent for Art” law—the allocation of 1% of construction costs of projects with significant public spaces for the installation of artworks.

Throughout the year, the joint team, led by Revital Ben-Asher Peretz, worked on placing the issue on the agenda of relevant decision-makers in government ministries, local authorities, and the private sector, while recruiting partners for the move. Simultaneously, two new studies were launched:

Optimal Integration of Contemporary Art in Planning Processes: By Architect Dr. Yonatan Lachter (published November 2025).
Models of Percent-for-Art Legislation in Progressive Countries: By Architect Talia Levy (forthcoming February 2026).

Based on this research and field work, the policy team drafted a new bill to regulate art in the public sphere in Israel. The proposal, co-written with Attorney Hadas Farber-Almogi, will be promoted in the Knesset during 2026.

Artist Fees

In 2025, the joint policy team also continued its work on regulating the payment of artist fees in public galleries in Israel. This year, the team successfully ensured that the budget addition of NIS 2 million for public galleries (originally achieved in 2024) was incorporated into the Ministry of Culture’s base budget, making it a permanent allocation.

Articles and Interviews (2025)

Regarding the Public Sphere Art Regulation Project:

Basic research

In 2025, the digital archive Point of View: Writings by Artists was expanded thanks to collaborations between the project and the Association for the Study of Women and Gender in Art in Israel, the Master’s Program in Art at the University of Haifa, the artist David Vakshtein’ Studio, and Dani Karavan’s Studio (1930–2021), managed by Noa Caravan-Cohen.

Among other things, this year the database made available the writings of artist Miriam Sharon, known as Israel’s first feminist artist; the writings of Israeli-international sculptor and Israel Prize laureate Dani Karavan; writings by artists from issues of the journal Painting and Sculpture, which was published during the 1970s; interviews with artists and teachers conducted by artist David Vakstein as part of his project “David and Goliath – Conversations with Artists,” and a collection of research on and through art by graduates of the Master of art program at the University of Haifa, which is managed by artist Talia Hoffman, Ph.D.

The project’s annual public event, Perspective Festival 2025, was hosted by the University of Haifa, at the School of Arts, Culture and Interpretation, with the participation of artists and writers and the art bookstore Magazine III, Jaffa.

The Perspective Workshop for Free Writing for Artists was held this year in collaboration with the Municipal Library in Migdal Shalom – Tel Aviv-Jaffa, led by literary researcher, editor, author, and translator Dr. Eran Horowitz. Participants included: Zinab Jeribia, Adi Argov, Abed al-Salam Sbia, Rafat Hatab, Noa Pardo, Efrat Gal-Nur, Yael Serlin, Rachel Anio, Ayelet Hashachar Cohen, and Yuval Etzioni.

The Point of View: Writings by Artists project was conceived and is jointly managed by the Plumas Art Foundation and the Marcel Association for the Promotion of Art and Culture, with the aim of strengthening art research in Israel and enhancing the status of artists in the fields of art, culture, and society. It is a not-for-profit organization.

Project managers: Adi Engelman and Itay Shabtai.

www.marcel-art-projects.org.il/pov-home

Public Art

In 2025, the Plumas Art Foundation, in collaboration with the Plastic Artists Association, began testing and implementing measures to create a model for integrating plastic artists into the initial planning stages of construction projects. The project is intended to complement the policy project, which has long been led by the Plastic Artists Association, to promote legislation requiring the allocation of a percentage of construction budgets for the placement of art in the project space.

In 2026, we will continue to develop an experimental initiative, in collaboration with the Plastic Artists Association, which includes specialized training for artists to acquire professional tools for installing art in public spaces, and the creation of pilot programs for collaboration with architectural firms.