Galit Gaon held my admissions interview for industrial design. Later we met when she taught me in curatorial studies at Tel Aviv University, and today she is the initiator and head of the prestigious curatorial program at Shenkar College. I also had the privilege of working alongside her when she was curator of the Design Museum in Holon.

She taught me that things I want need to be announced out loud, that’s how they will become reality. She also taught me that the most important collection of any museum is the people who work in it. And that design is a language that connects people no matter where they come from. She also promised me everything would be okay after I had my first daughter, and that I could do everything, because that’s life. She was right about it all. I recommend reading what she has to say.

Tal

Can you introduce yourself?
I am a Senior Curator of Design specializing in material and visual culture in Israel. Head of the Shenkar Center for Design Research, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and Head of the Design Curatorial Program I founded about a decade ago. Before Shenkar, and for about a decade, I managed and curated the Israel Museum of Cartoons and Comics and was the curator of the Design Museum.

Tell us about your work? What field do you come from?
I come from home.
I studied industrial design and architecture at Bezalel, and curation and research at Tel Aviv University.
But I grew up at the Israel Museum, in the Department of Design and Architecture, managed and curated by my father, Izika Gaon, who was the curator of the department from its founding in 1973 until his untimely death in 1997.

Curation, originally, was defined as the responsibility to arrange, sort, and edit a collection of objects and the information that accompanies them, but only after the French Revolution was the name curator given to those who were responsible for preserving, arranging, and presenting the collection. Today, the curatorial role comprises of a variety of practices and is not necessarily related to ownership of any collection or to an action arising from a permanent collection. Curators will operate through practices of research, entrepreneurship, motivation, learning, experience design, along with publishing and writing about the collection. In Latin, the word “Curator” derives from the Latin verb “Curare” which means “to care for / preserve / take care of” and expresses his areas of responsibility alongside the course of the curator’s work.

The role of the contemporary curator includes an vigilant presence in the field of action and research, locating and marking topics, creating centrality, movement and innovation in the field, forming a context and new research – theoretical, practical, relational or object-based, processing found materials into space, structure and color while translating the ideas into objects, demanding their finality, recording and preserving them in appropriate conditions, accuracy in research about them, and in their translation into documents or display, caring for translating research and creative objects to the audience of readers-researchers-visitors in a general way that is optimal for the audience and the objects while accurately using all the means of space design-media structure-lighting.

What do you think about craft in Israel today?
We need to start by saying how difficult and complex but necessary it is to sustain the creative craft industry. It is not a “job” but a way of life. In the socio-economic-political structure of Israel – being a craft creator is a mission, a calling and also a battle for survival.

I don’t believe there is an “Israeli craft” just as I know there is no “Israeli design”. There are designers who work in Israel, or craft creators who work here. History, archaeology, material and visual culture, time, conditions and opportunities – shape their work to be unique and local.

Where do you draw inspiration from?
I read, follow the work of designers and  curators in Israel and around the world. In general, I see a lot of theater, dance, cinema and music – these are the most interesting times to think new thoughts. And yes, as expected, at least once a week, I go to museums. Each and every one of them – nature, science, art, design. A week without a museum is a week without air.

The most interesting conversations are happening here, in our office, with the small and noble staff of the center, and in my work with the students of curatorship, as with the students of design. I feel that I manage to formulate my thoughts coherently enough, so that some of them become text and some of them become exhibitions.

So people are my favorite part. And for that you need a lot of love. There is no other way to say it, you can’t work in this profession without love. And you have to love everyone, the difficult and complicated, the fearful, the confident, the disturbed. To love is to give up the fear of making mistakes, the fear of being alone, the fear of choosing. To love those who criticize and those who praise, to love the missing words, the endless hesitations, the freedom, and the right to change again and again and again. To love what makes the day so delightful and exhausting at the same time. And it is not possible otherwise.

How do you start creating a piece for a new exhibition?
Curating, as curator Naomi Aviv defined it in her wonderful article “The Poetic Possibility of Curating,” is similar to writing poetry. It is critical but contains the curator’s obligation to operate in the contextual space: “Since artists tend to function with a special sensitivity to the spirit of the times, it would be unfair and unwise to give the mediation of their art to their cultural-political positions. He hopes to collect, unfold, hang or place before the eyes of the viewers.”

At the beginning of her professional career, the curator was an organizer, a recorder, a preserver, and a documenter. Today, she is required to express an opinion, tell a story, shape an experience and learning, enable, examine, stretch the boundaries of the familiar, and protect the artists, creators, designers, and men and women so that they can continue to express the questions that accompany our lives without having to give an answer or pay a price. She is required to be a mirror reflecting the entirety of contexts, time, culture, and human experience.

What is your favorite part of the work process? Or your workday?
The moment when I enter the hall, after months of work, and begin to place the works in the space. A choreographic-textual-sensory discussion between me and the objects. A pleasure.

What are you working on these days?
I am a co-curator for the Third Biennial of Arts and Design at Eretz Israel Museum.

What else do you dream of achieving?
Finishing the two books I’m writing.

Tell us about something you learned from your grandmother.
My grandmother, Grandma Lottie, taught me to knit. At a very young age, she decided to teach me skills that would help me survive in the world. That’s how I learned to knit, sew buttons to mend socks on a tree stump, and also pluck chicken feathers (which made me a vegetarian). She was a tough and strict teacher. And she believed that there was only one way to do things – and that was – well and on time.