Salon at the Museum

Salon at the Museum: Art, Space, Dialogue

Curator: Sari Golan

What will happen if the museum becomes the home we all need at this point in time? A salon full of human interactions and creative connections; a whole forever greater than the sum of its parts; a jigsaw puzzle in which every piece is meaningful and important: you are important; I am important. What will happen if we momentarily tear down the museum's imaginary partitions or simply replace them with domestic walls? What kind of home will we get? One that is embracing, containing, enriching, challenging, inspiring; one that gives a place to everyone, and not only to those hitherto granted a central place in the history of Israeli art and the public discourse. Maybe we don't have to erase the past to move towards the future; maybe we can grow from this fertile ground and learn from it.

What should the salon (living room in Hebrew) of this house look like here, in Israel? I have more questions than answers, but I believe that if we all ask them together, with sensitivity and an open heart, we will discover something new about art, space, and dialogue.

As part of the Salon at the Museum project, Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art explores its potential relations with the artistic, cultural, and social space, as well as the points of convergence between all these. It seeks to indicate its approach regarding the affinities between the museum's role as an artistic-cultural space and its function as a social space in Israel today. The project includes a display of artworks from the Museum collection, dating from the 1950s to the present, corresponding both with the 19th-century Parisian art salon and with the (metaphorical) Israeli residential-domestic living room. Salon at the Museum was spawned by a desire to delve into the past of Israeli art while simultaneously looking through the prism of the present into the future; to reconsider the history of local art out of a commitment to the innovative contemporary art created in Israel.

 Alongside the collection exhibition, a stage and six seating areas were installed in the entrance gallery space. Made of wood, some were created in collaboration with the MOLET group, which combines sustainable Israeli design with an added value of contribution to the community. As part of the project, the Museum will hold a series of cultural events, Salon talks, and various activities for diverse audiences, and will initiate a dialogue and collaborations with micro-communities in the city of Ramat Gan and throughout the country. The program will include dance, performance, and music, philosophy, theory, literature, and writing sessions, discussion and dialogue groups, think tanks, multidisciplinary workshops, etc.