At the World's Navel

The world's busiest museum director may well be boyish Karl Katz at Bezalel National. Museum in Israel. In a sense, Bezalel's collection was built as Israel itself was built--by the patriotic zeal of Jews the world over. Since its founding 53 years ago, Jewish collectors have sent Bezalel some 250,000 art objects of every conceivable kind, making it the richest and most diversified general museum in the Middle East.

Beginning with Garbage. Katz's own cluttered office is like a miniature of the museum as a whole. Among its jumble lie a death mask of Modigliani, Japanese sword-guards, English portrait miniatures, an Etruscan gold fibula, the earliest known Passover haggada, an uncut diamond shaped like the star of David, and a 15th century Hebrew anthology lavishly illuminated and valued at $500,000. The office shelves are ranged with Egyptian glassware. Persian ceramics and Hellenistic sculptures. On the wall is a never-exhibited triptych by Bernado Daddi. Recently a museum staffer turned up a unique Egyptian figurine, of about 1400 B.C., in one of the desk drawers. "This kind of thing happens all the time," Katz purrs, "and we still have a number of unexcavated desks."

Since taking over as director two years ago, Katz has almost finished the prodigious task of cataloguing the collection, between times has scurried across Europe and the U.S. seeking money for a new $2,000,000 building with room to display the treasures now consigned to storerooms in the present old mansion in Jerusalem. By last week he had accumulated enough money to order preliminary plans, had picked a site on a breezy ridge just outside the city, hopes to break ground this September.

Katz, 29, has excavated far more than desks. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he proved himself an archaeologist at heart while still a boy, when he first noticed that his mother always disposed of the garbage in neat paper parcels. Wondering what family secrets garbage might be presumed to hold, Katz patrolled the block every evening, collecting samples from each can. Back home in the cellar he analyzed his findings, learned a good deal about how the neighbors lived. "In archaeology," he says, "the garbage is older."

Room for the Best. Katz got his formal training at Flatbush Hebrew Institute and Columbia (where he specialized in early Islamic manuscripts and modern art). A stint at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum, followed by intensive digging throughout the Middle East, helped temper Katz for his Jerusalem post, which would try the energy and scholarship of a dozen ordinary men.

Aware that Israel is both very old and very new, Katz keeps sending his ancient treasures on tour and clearing his own limited wall space for loan exhibitions of contemporary work. On view at Bezale last week: traveling shows of prints and paintings from the U.S. and Norway "They used to call Jerusalem the navel of the world," says Katz in his intense, buzz-saw voice. "What better place for a museum that brings together the best art of all periods and peoples?"

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