Vera Tamari

Vera Tamari (; born 1945) is a Palestinian visual artist, art historian, curator and educator. She is known for artwork in ceramics, sculpture, painting, and installation art. Tamari taught at Birzeit University for many years. She founded the Birzeit Museum of Ethnography and Art. Tamari lives in Ramallah, West Bank. Renowned for her multidisciplinary practice, Tamari has significantly contributed to the development of contemporary Palestinian art through her innovative use of materials and commitment to cultural preservation. She was a founding member of the Palestinian art movement, New Visions , with Tayseer Barakat, Sliman Mansour and Nabil Anani, in response to the First Intifada.

Early life and education Vera Tamari was born in 1945, in Jerusalem, into a Palestinian Christian family originally from Jaffa. Her mother Margo Dabbas was a visual artist, as well as her older brother Vladimir Tamari (1942–2017). She was three years old in 1948 during the Nakba, and her family moved to Jaffa temporarily.

She received a B.A. degree in 1966 in fine arts from Beirut College for Women (now the Lebanese American University); and received a M.Phil. degree in 1984 in Islamic art and architecture from the University of Oxford in Oxford, England. The group wanted to created Palestinian visual art on native land. In 1987, the New Visions art group was founded by Tamari, Tayseer Barakat, Sliman Mansour, and Nabil Anani. As a group the members of New Visions had pledge to make art with naturally found materials, in order to divest from spending money on Israeli art supplies.

Publications