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The exhibition "Schooling" examines educational and teaching processes, mechanisms of socialization, and the ways in which the world of young citizens is shaped. This exhibition examines the forgotten world of school and of the classroom, and attempts to resuscitate distant memories and map out significant behavioral codes. The relations between teachers and students, as well as canonical ceremonies and rituals, are examined in terms of their power to influence and shape experience in the context of the Israeli education system. The exhibition also analyzes the aesthetic character of the school environment, as impoverished as it may be, and raises questions concerning the visual and emotional responses it provokes.

Bristol boards weighing 180 gr. and measuring 100x70 cm. functioned, for many years, as the ultimate support for transmitting educational messages that needed to be memorized and internalized: proverbs, regulations, images, and behavioral rules. "The language of Bristol boards" is a visual language like any other: it is characterized by certain colors, fonts, and decorative elements, and by its own internal logic. Prior to the rise of Facebook and of other communications networks, Bristol boards were used by teachers to disseminate, amplify, and underscore a range of themes and ideas.

The exhibition is centered on the "Bristol Boards/Utopia" project – a computerized information center that presents alternative educational initiatives both in Israel and elsewhere in the world, and introduces visitors to the most progressive ideas in this field. Art itself appears, in this context, as a vital and inspiring way of thinking, which opens up onto the possibility of a different kind of learning; it is presented in the exhibition as an educational option capable of questioning existing conventions, and of giving rise to new forms of action and invention.

The exhibition "Schooling" presents the entire museum as an interactive learning environment. In the course of the exhibition, the participating artists and additional guests will teach a range of classes and hold discussions on various subjects. Can the museum function as a site for the development of new ideas, and not merely as a site for acquiring art-related knowledge?

Tali Tamir, Meir Tati

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