TEL AVIV.- The exhibition "Five Moments" attempts to undertake this type of challenge. It presents, in a simultaneous and non-linear manner, two historical and historiographical readings of the Tel Aviv Museum's five buildings. The parallel presentation of these readings is designed to offer multiple possibilities for interpreting the ideas, discourses and processes that shaped the design of these buildings.

The first reading examines the evolution of these buildings from a historic point of view, which focuses on each individual building and its architectural context. It details the architectural choices and ideas that shaped the design of each building, the various stages of their development, the challenges faced by their initiators and designers, and their reception by professional and non-professional audiences both prior to and following their inauguration.

In contrast to the first reading, which concentrates on the individual buildings the second reading focuses on the evolving relations between them, as well as on their relations to architectural practice and discourse in both a local and an international context. By offering these different readings, the exhibition creates a historical synthesis of these "moments," which participated in the consolidation of a local architectural identity – as well as in shaping a more general cultural identity. 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 museum building on Shaul Hamelech Boulevard (1971); the Meyerhoff Art Education Center (1994); and the new Herta and Paul Amir building currently being inaugurated alongside the existing museum on Shaul Hamelech Boulevard.

These five moments may appear to constitute arbitrary points in time, which were determined by the interplay of different forces and the availability of the resources necessary to promote the museum institution and to construct each of the buildings. Yet seen from a historical perspective, which takes into consideration the intervals between these moments and the processes that took place in these intervals, these moments represent the evolution of local architectural and cultural discourses. Moreover, these moments may be taken to reflect the reciprocal relations between a museum and its building in relation to both local and international architectural discourses. Each of the "moments" examined in this context thus represents a distinct historical, cultural and architectural period, both in Israel and in an international context: the International Style of the 1930s; the late modernism of the 1950s; the Brutalism of the 1970s; the post-modernism of the 1990s; and trends in contemporary, digital architecture.

For the fifth time in the history of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the last wish of its founder, the city's first mayor, is endowed with new meaning. This exhibition celebrates this fifth "moment," yet presents, in its own unique way, the history of the entire city through the prism of its museum buildings. And as history has already taught us, the inauguration of this new building and of this exhibition also marks the countdown towards the next, sixth "moment."

Guest Curators: Dr. Arch. Yasha Grobman and Arch. Arielle Blonder