Soap and glory at the Uri Geller Museum

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.

The latest project of Uri Geller, spoon-bender extraordinaire, is the construction of a museum in the ancient port of Jaffa in Israel, along the coast from his native Tel Aviv. As ever with Geller, however, the venture – the museum is scheduled to open next year – is already proving to be full of surprises.

As reported by the Jerusalem Post, Geller says he ‘felt intuitively’ that something was hidden beneath a pile of detritus on the construction site; it turned out to be the remains of a 19th-century soap factory, complete with underground vaults, mixing troughs, water cisterns and a large cauldron.

Fascinating though the find is, it can’t quite rival Geller’s intentions for the museum itself. As he puts it: ‘The Uri Geller Museum will exhibit unique items and gifts that I collected and received over the years from notables, such as Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein and others.’ The star attraction, it seems, will be a Cadillac decorated with ‘around 2,000 spoons that had belonged to famous people, most of which I bent with my mind, and others which I obtained at auction.’

Regular readers may recall Rakewell’s last spoonful of Geller-related news, from 2015, when a spoon-shaped sculpture the illusionist had installed on a public path in Berkshire was challenged by locals and the local council. As he declared: ‘You can take my spoon, but you’ll never bend my creative freedom!’

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