photo: © Design Museum Holon

On January 31, 2010, the Design Museum in Holon, Israel, will be inaugurated. Actually, the building will open its doors, while another six weeks will be needed for the opening of the first exhibition.
During my PhD research, on October 27, 2009, I had the opportunity to interview Galit Gaon, who is the Creative Director of the Museum.
Although it is too early to make any evaluation of the overall project, and although it is the iconic architecture by Ron Arad Associates that is taking most of the attention so far – an architecture which «could be featured on a postage stamp», as the architects were required – it seems that Gaon and her staff definitely did not miss to ponder on the museological program and the curatorial approach.

May we start from the architecture? Reading the press release, it seems this was the starting point, wasn’t it?
I am involved in this museum from last summer; the project was from Ron Arad Architects, there were two people involved in this project, one is Asa Bruno and the other is Daniel Charny who is now a curator in the Design Museum [London], but at that time was working with Asa, and they were writing the program for the museum, there was no curator involved. So the program was based on different design museums they have visited, and the conclusions they had from their visits, and they started about the museum… so there was no curatorial questions at the moment. Of course, contemporary design was scheduled very early, as have international exhibitions, travelling exhibitions, and also original exhibitions. But this is so general, we could have designed anything after this sentence.

Have you already a vision of the position of the museum in the “museum world”?
No, not yet, because it is not open. We know the position on the architectural side. Not yet in the curatorial side, and I think it will take us 5 years to understand where we stand in the line of design museums. In architectural side, we should be the only museum for design ,the building is specifically designed for this, it is not an old building or different house, it is a museum designed to be a design museum, which means that the architecture is designed to be a part of the museum.

Like the Vitra…
Ok, Vitra Design Museum of course was designed to be a design museum, but Vitra was at the beginning a museum for traveling exhibitions and was not sponsored by the municipality or with public money, it was a private museum. I am talking about public museums, not the private, commercial ones.

How are the interiors organized, I saw cafe space and galleries from the renderings?
Yes we have a coffee shop and the museums store, and then we have very small space, where we will exhibit the process of the architecture, from the project to the architecture itself. We have movies, and of course documentation of the architecture day by day, sketches, clear grounds, foundations, and so on, and this is going to be a permanent exhibition about the museum. Then we have a space which is not completed at the moment for permanent collection exhibition.

Do you also have contacts with Israeli designers, archives, libraries?
Yes we do, it is very important that we keep very close connections with designers. There are no private collections, just designers who may have their collections in the studios, and we’re in connection with the 2 archives in Israel, one is the Digital archive of design, held by Shenkar, which is an academy of design and fashion, and the other is an archive/collection which is inside the Israel Museum.

So there is the will to be a representative for Israeli design?
Yes in the archive, yes.

I read you are connected with the Holon Institute of Technology, is it so?
Today [October 27, 2009] we start a course in the HIT, in the Industrial design department, and they are having a course with a professor, which aim is to develop educational programs for the museum, so we will have group of design students (2nd and 3rd year) working with us from today and on towards developing programs for education, and guiding tours inside the museum, because we believe designers should be involved in the museum, in all aspects of the museum; so we could have students working in the museum, guiding tours, working with children, and all other jobs, form being assistants for curators or in archive; so this relationship is very important for us.

So the target for the museum include students, children… Is this something related to the Children museum and the approach you have there?
No, not at all, the Children Museum is a permanent exhibition, which is very emotional very experimental, to experience the world of nature and dream. We are not working with young children, we are going to work with youth, aged from 12.

Has design gained recognition in Israel or is it still a field to be promoted?
It depends on whom you talk and ask. For designers, it is not there yet, we haven’t achieved all our goals and recognition of the work of designers. If you talk to people in the street, they say “yes of course, we know design, we use designers etc.”, and we can read about design in magazines; what we are not doing yet, and we would like to do it more, one of our mission, is to make industries in Israel to use designers, to understand that design is part of the R&D development, and not just styling at the end of the product. This is very a serious job we have to do.

Probably, you would not believe it, but, differently from what people can imagine, in Italy we may have the same problem. Besides the myth of Italian design, or the idea of design in Italy being just around the corner, people’s awareness about design and the value of design is really lacking, as it is the public recognition from the government or public institutions – quite a different situation from UK, where, anyway, they would probably say the same…
It is true. Italy… there is a notion of… maybe because Italian design was a leader in some areas, and maybe if you look in Milan, but that’s it. And it is the same in Israel. If you ask designers, they say, “yes we have a good community of designers but nobody takes us to work”; industries are not using our forces, and we have to work harder. I think we, in the museum, we will talk about the design approach to the general public. ‘Cause I think if people would go into the museum, and then go outside, and then they have a second look at their cars, their house, or the bag they are going to buy for their kids, and then say “ok, I have another criteria to consider when I am buying things, not just beauty or color, maybe I know something about design”, about function, materials, technology, human scale, so maybe slowly we will make people use design better.

So you will talk about different strands of design, from architecture to fashion, to technology etc.?
Exactly. And the museum, in our vision, is going to be about questions, and not about answers. I think that a museum is a place to have a good fight, intellectual fights. These days is wrong to have a museum that says this this is “good”… A museum is a place where to debate, and people can be a part of it. Not just go through the exhibition and then home, just thinking “Ok I did that”.

… and maybe just before going home buy something in the museum shop!
Yes, this is it.

This is interesting for me, since my research’s aim is to shift attention towards the model of science and technology museums, where, of course, they have their “hall of fames” and inventors, but they also started discussing long ago on how to raise questions and how to deal with controversies, concerning for instance the relationship between technology and society, or the environment.
Yes. But Science museums, at least in Israel, are becoming a place full of buttons to push, and this is not a debate.

You are right, I usually do not consider science centers. So, about the first exhibition: I heard about story-telling, will this be the approach?
Since this museum will be about questions, and focusing our interest into the curators, into the people who gather together objects to tell stories. Curators, the storytellers: usually the curators are in the back, the put together the objects, and then people see these. We would like to take people through the story, we would like people to understand the reasons why curators chose the objects, the connections they had in their mind. Why did you put this chair beside this table? What do they mean together? What would you like people to feel when they walk into the exhibition? This is one of the core of the museum, to work with curators that have an agenda, that have something to say, and not just a collection of “the best of Philippe Starck”…

Also, I do not know if you ever saw exhibitions curated by designers about themselves, you enter and you cannot understand…
… anything. Yes, we saw a lot of them in Israel. Because curators are mediators – I think this is the right word – between the public and whatever is happening in the museum. And people need better explanation, to be taken by their hand, and walk with them along the exhibition, and make them enjoy it, make them feel happy, sad, or something, just make them feel a part of the museum, of this experience.

The 4 curators are working there?*
No, they came here and saw the museum, so they know size, space etc., but they are working all around the world, in Europe, China, South Africa.

They work together or there will be 4 sections?
They work together, they send each other images etc. By the middle of march 2010 will open the exhibition, while we have an opening of the building end of January, then we close the building, to install the exhibition, and then open again.

* Curators for the first exhibition will be: «Mrs Barbara Bloemink - former Head Curator for Cooper Hewitt and Mad, Mr. Eric Chen, Creative Director 100% Design Shanghai and journalist (New York Times, The Art Newspaper, Surface.), Ms Julie Lasky - ex Editor in chief I.D. Magazine and Mr. Garth Walker, graphic designer and curator (South Africa)», see DMH’s press announcement.