From Private to Public: How Herzliya Biennial Redefines Urban Space in a Digital Age

On a warm October evening in 2019, several hundred residents of Herzliya gathered in Sokolov Square, the city's central plaza typically reserved for official ceremonies and political rallies. Instead of speeches, they encountered a vast projection mapping installation transforming the municipal building's façade into a dynamic canvas of light and sound. Inside the building—normally off-limits after business hours—corridors became exhibition spaces, office cubicles housed sound installations, and the mayor's conference room hosted a participatory workshop on urban planning. This radical opening of civic architecture was the centerpiece of the 2019 Herzliya Biennial, titled "Reimagining Community," and it signaled a profound shift in how the biennial approaches the increasingly blurred boundaries between public and private realms.

"The building itself became a metaphor for the changing relationship between citizens and civic institutions," explains Aya Lurie, the biennial's artistic director since 2012. "By literally inviting the public inside spaces usually closed to them, we asked what true public space means in an era where physical and digital spheres constantly overlap." This question has become central to the Herzliya Biennial's evolving identity, distinguishing it from better-known international counterparts that still primarily operate within established museum contexts.

Herzliya's biennial emerged in 2007 during a period of rapid development in this coastal city just north of Tel Aviv. Originally known as a wealthy suburb and high-tech hub, Herzliya was experiencing both architectural transformation and social stratification. The inaugural biennial, organized by then-director of the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Dalia Levin, aimed to connect contemporary art with urban discourse by placing works in public spaces rather than isolating them in gallery settings.

From these modest beginnings—the first edition featured just 23 artists and attracted primarily local audiences—the biennial has evolved into Israel's most experimental platform for exploring the intersection of art, architecture, and civic engagement. By the 2015 edition, "Home and Away," international artists began participating in significant numbers, and attendance surpassed 45,000 visitors, including dedicated art tourists from Europe and North America.

What distinguishes the Herzliya model is its emphasis on durational engagement rather than spectacle. Unlike biennials that parachute international stars into a location for brief installations, Herzliya developed a residency program that embeds artists in the city for months before the exhibition. "We're interested in meaningful dialogue with place rather than imposing artistic visions," says Dana Levy, who directs the biennial's public programs. "Artists spend time living in different neighborhoods, meeting with community groups, learning local histories. The resulting works emerge from these sustained relationships."

This approach became particularly evident in the 2017 edition, "Temporary Structures," which responded to Herzliya's building boom and housing affordability crisis. For six months before the biennial, Israeli architect Kerem Halbrecht lived in a temporary dwelling he constructed in different neighborhoods, hosting conversations about development and displacement. His final installation—documentation of these dialogues alongside architectural proposals generated from community input—occupied a contested lot slated for luxury development. The project ultimately influenced municipal housing policy, with the city council voting to require affordable units in new developments along the lines suggested by biennial participants.

"That moment marked a shift from art-as-commentary to art-as-catalyst," notes urban theorist Tali Hatuka, who documented the biennial's impact on local planning. "By creating temporary interventions that demonstrated alternative possibilities, the biennial expanded the imagination of both residents and officials about what the city could become."

The upcoming 2025 edition, "Thresholds: Between Public and Private," extends this trajectory by examining how digital technologies are transforming our understanding of public and private realms. Curator Tal Bechler describes the conceptual framework: "We're interested in how smartphones and social media have disrupted traditional boundaries between personal and communal experience. When we're physically present in public space but mentally engaged in private digital exchanges, what happens to our sense of civic belonging?"

Planned projects include a series of augmented reality installations that reveal invisible layers of urban data; a temporary social housing prototype that reimagines domestic space for the sharing economy; and interventions in Herzliya's commercial center that transform shopping experiences into moments of collective reflection. Many works deliberately blur digital and physical environments, using technology not as spectacle but as a means to question technology's role in reshaping social relationships.

What makes the Herzliya Biennial particularly relevant in today's biennale landscape is its scale and context. Neither a massive global platform like Venice nor a regional showcase, Herzliya offers a middle path—internationally engaged but intensely site-specific, experimental yet accessible to non-art audiences. In a global context where many biennials struggle with questions of local relevance versus international prestige, Herzliya demonstrates how medium-sized cities can develop cultural platforms that matter both to residents and the broader art world.

"We're not trying to be the biggest or most spectacular," Lurie emphasizes. "We're trying to be the most embedded in the actual life of our city, while still offering artists freedom to take risks they couldn't take in commercial or institutional contexts." As the boundaries between public and private continue to shift in our networked world, the Herzliya model suggests that art's critical role might lie precisely in making these threshold spaces visible—creating moments where communities can collectively reimagine the civic commons for a digital age.