5 Moments Exhibition Design, Tel-Aviv Museum of Art, IL

The history of the Tel Aviv Museum has been shaped by several major turning points, which took place at five specific moments in time. These moments mark the inauguration of the buildings designed over the years to house the museum: Dizengoff House  –  the private home of the city's first mayor, Meir Dizengoff (1932); the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion (1959); the main museum building on Shaul Hamelech Boulevard (1971); the Meyerhoff Art Education Center (1996); and the new Herat and Paul Amir building.  

The exhibition "Five Moments" presents a series of cross-sections that offer a historical synthesis between these different moments, thus enabling us to examine the changes and processes that have shaped the construction of Israeli culture and architecture.  

The five moments that define the architectural history of the museum are thus examined from a multidimensional perspective. The exhibition's central axis analyzes the design and construction process of each building in a traditional, linear manner. This axis includes pertinent historical and architectural documents – models, plans, drafts ,  photographs, and so forth – which present the architecture and design process of the different museum buildings, the challenges faced by the architects and by those who commissioned their design, and the reception of each building by the general public. 

An additional axis is concerned with a less familiar aspect of building design – the alternatives that were not chosen and the roads not taken, as well as plans whose future realization is anticipated. This axis presents the design process as a nonlinear practice that involves a range of possibilities ,  influences, and contrasting forces. From this perspective, the final product is one of numerous possible options, which represents the common understandings reached by various forces at a given moment in time. This product is thus perceived as an organic creature, whose vitality represents a constant process of evolution and encompasses the constant need for change and growth.

The exhibition design spatially embodies this set of different readings. The historical continuum is represented by means of continuous, undulating strips of paper, which feature five isolated moments: these five central strips of data constitute the main point of reference. The spatial orientation of these central strips, which present a range of events and detailed documentation concerning the different buildings, dialogues with the new building's physical axes. 
An additional series of diagonally oriented strips presents the alternative history of each of the five moments. This secondary series of strips responds to the building's secondary set of axes, which define the exhibition space and are embodied by the diagonal wall at one end of the gallery. These two systems of axes – the central one and the secondary one – are accompanied by a synthetic, lateral space that extends across the entire exhibition gallery, and presents a comparative reading of the buildings. This space is informed by the data presented in the central space, and constitutes an inseparable part of it; at the same time, its examination allows for a transversal ,  historiographical reading of historical processes. 
The viewer's free movement through the space and among these different strips of paper is not limited by any one trajectory, and allows for endless possibilities that create new meanings and personal interpretations. This nonlinear approach opens up onto multiple possibilities for understanding the ideas, discourses, and processes that shaped the museum buildings.

Data:

Type: interior design
Design and construction: 2011
Opening: 2011
Area: 400 sq”m

Credits:

• Architecture: Axelrod-Grobman Architects with Arielle Blonder
  
• Principal in charge: Yasha Grobman
  
• Design team: Yasha Grobman, Neta Karp, Itay Blaistain, Yaniv Geller, Dana Schwimmer
  
• Exhibition Curators: Yasha Grobman, Arielle Blonder
  
• Associate Curator: Etty Hilevitz
• Graphic Layer Design: Noam Schechter
  
• Associate Graphic Designers: Avi Bohbot, Nitzan Ron
  Research Assistants: Naomi Simhony, Sophia Berry, Dana Schwimmer
  Design Team: Itay Blaistain, Yaniv Geller, Dana Schwimmer
  Head of Installation Team: Itay Blaistain
  Installation Team: Itay Blaistain, Lola Ben Alon, Samuel Benichou, Yaniv Geller, Yossi Goor,
  Neta Karp, Amit Matalon, Chen Naor, Moshe Nissan, Arielle Papa, Yuval Rubinstein,
  Dana Schwimmer, Assaf Shiloh, Ida Vass, Sebastian Wordoff, Eran Zrihen
  Architectural Models: Dvora Stanislavsky, Ida Vass
  3-D Modelling: Eran Zrihen
• Photos: Shai Epstein