The Janco-Dada Museum is pleased to announce the opening of a new center for the study of Dada and contemporary art. The center is situated in the museum’s upper gallery and will be open to researchers and students by prior arrangement. The center will contain most of the literature written about the Dada movement and Marcel Janco, as well as materials from research conducted over the years at the museum, archived materials from Marcel Janco’s estate and more. In addition, the center will contain books and catalogues on contemporary art. Scientific advice in establishing the center was provided by the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of Haifa headed by Prof. Rachel Ben-Canaan, with professional assistance from Ms. Inbal Shtuhl.
The center was established thanks to a donation from the Boris Lurie Art Foundation in New York. Lurie, who passed away in 2008, was a friend of Marcel Janco. In 1959 Lurie founded the NO!art movement, an anomalous movement on the American art scene that was dominated by pop art. Researchers claim that the NO!art movement is close to neo-Dada. Instead of using abstraction, the NO!art movement represented reality not by imitating it but rather by assimilating quotations and borrowing customary cultural images.
Due to the direct connection between NO!art and Dada, it was natural to design the new center in the spirt of the NO!art movement. Hence, the bookshelves and archive materials are housed in structures shaped like duplications of the word: NO!
