The Moment the Music Stood Still: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition

🎵 About the Exhibition

The Weitzman will host a one-week pop-up of the Nova Music Festival Exhibition October 6-13. The exhibition narrates the events of October 7th at the Nova Music Festival that celebrated the beauty of music as a vehicle for joy and unity. It documents the devastating attack that resulted in the largest massacre in music history. This limited-time engagement empowers visitors to responsibly explore the horrific events, re-creating a moment that was dedicated to peace and love but savagely cut short. At its core, the exhibition is an emotional memorial that enables viewers to “bear witness” to the events that occurred on that day,and look with hope and healing toward the future.

🎵 Learn More

Thousands of music and arts fans gathered to celebrate life and music in Re’im Israel at the Nova Music Festival. At sunrise on Saturday, October 7th at 6:29 AM, the peaceful music festival was brutally and abruptly disrupted as thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and murdered 1200 innocent civilians and abducted more than 250 people, among festival attendees.

The dream of the Nova Festival did not die at the October 7 massacre.

This exhibition, created and directed by Reut Feingold and organized by the Nova Music Festival’s producers, pays homage to the festival attendees, including the 410 murdered by Hamas, the 22 hostages who remain in captivity, and the 3,750 survivors.

For one-week only, the pop-up, traveling version of The Moment the Music Stood Still: The Nova Music Festival Exhibition, will display remnants salvaged from the festival grounds including a camping area with tents, empty bottles, and a replica DJ booth, as well as video testimonies and written first person accounts. The exhibition space will be transformed via dim and colorful lighting that evokes a concert, while creating a contemplative atmosphere.

Two scorched vehicles left at the music festival site will be stationed on the Kimmel Plaza in front of the Museum for the duration of the exhibition.

These artifacts memorialize a horrific event when the lives of festival-goers celebrating music—if they survived—were irrevocably changed. Through their stories and these artifacts, visitors will bear witness and encounter the poignant call to action embraced by survivors of the massacre: “We will dance again.”