International Symposium on Contemporary Museum Architecture

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art will mark the opening of its new Herta and Paul Amir Building with a day-long international symposium on architecture. Preston Scott Cohen, Sylvia Lavin, Jeff Kipnis, Dan Sherer, Jesse Reiser, Inaki Abalos and Ben Van Berkel will discuss numerous themes including the tension between the two prevailing models of museums today: the museum of neutral white boxes, allowing for maximum curatorial freedom, and the museum of architectural identity, conducive to the production of public spectacle. These defining issues of curatorial vs. architectural conceptions, and of art vs. public life, motivated the design of the new TAMA building, where the galleries are the life and soul of the entire museum, even while being organized around the powerful architectural spectacle of the spiraling "Lightfall." An antidote to the Bilbao phenomenon, the new building of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art represents a new direction: an interiorized and socialized space of spectacle, as opposed to the ‘90s model of an exterior sculptural object displayed to the city.