Annual Report. Academic year 2022/2023

The academic year 2022–2023 was an exciting one. It started with yet another wave of Covid and limitations on the numbers of museum visitors, but those restrictions were lifted by the beginning of 2023 and we were free to reactivate the museum with normal procedures, and indeed public visitation and events bounced back to the pre-Covid state.With the anticipated increase in the public inflow, we kept the Global Warning climate change temporary exhibition running for a 2nd year because it was so timely and hence popular among our visitors, many of whom did not get the chance to experience it before. At the same time, we worked on developing the next temporary display, by the talented artist Nevet Yitzhak. A new outdoors art exhibition at the Galil Plaza opened (Passage), as was a pop-up exhibition (Run), both with strong nature and conservation themes befitting our museum, as were two interactive displays — one on the ecosystem services and one on sustainable nutrition, particularly timely topics, where the museum’s contribution was significant. Thus, the museum remains current, active and attractive to the public, and we were rewarded by a really great response to our efforts.During the academic year, we were happy to continue hiring senior faculty members both at the researcher and at the lecturer tracks, a new opportunity that opened to us with the recognition of the museum as an academic unit at Tel Aviv University. Drs Shay Rotics and Tom Shlezinger were hired as Senior Lecturers on joint appointments with the School of Zoology at the Faculty of Life Sciences, and joined Dr Ronit Justo-Hanani, a joint appointment with the Faculty of Social Sciences. Dr Yaron Hershkovitz was hired on the researcher track, and joined Drs Meirav Meiri, Gidi Pisanty, Karin Tamar, Zohar Yanai, Zafrir Kuplik, Liron Goren, and Shevy (Bat-Sheva) Rothman. These enrollments (and those to come) brought much needed taxonomic and ecological expertise and provided considerable strength to the Steinhardt Museum research program.The Israel Center for Citizen Science made its first steps and the excellent young team led by Dr Tomer Gueta was working hard, forging working relationships with a variety of citizen science projects in Israel and experts abroad, and providing a technological platform and support as well as professional expertise in taxonomy, ecology and education to promote this field of research engagement in Israel.During the 2023 summer, we opened—with our partners in KKL