ART

Irony is apparently alive and well in Israel, where an exhibit of Islamic jewelry is on display at the Israel Museum. Timed to coincide with the country’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Six Day War, the exhibit features 400 engraved gems and some 200 masterworks of mostly medieval Islamic jewelry created in the workshops of Bagdad, Cairo, Damascus and Beirut--all capitals of countries Israel has fought with since its creation in 1948. Funded by collector Benjamin Zucker, a Jewish New Yorker, the show has the enthusiastic patronage of Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek, who says there could be no more fitting way to mark 20 years of reunited Jerusalem than with a subject that unites Muslims and Jews. No Islamic country has loaned jewelry for the exhibition.