CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo

CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo, formerly known as the Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv, is a non-collecting contemporary art institution in Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Founded in 1998, it commissions and produces new projects by living artists, with particular emphasis on Israeli artists, and maintains a year-round program of exhibitions, performances, screenings, and public events. Since 2005, the center has been housed at the Rachel and Israel Pollak Gallery on Tsadok Hacohen Street in central Tel Aviv-Yafo.

Curator Sergio Edelsztein founded the center in 1998 and served as director and chief curator for nearly two decades, until 2017. In November 2005, the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality granted the institution its current home, the Rachel and Israel Pollak Gallery, which provided dedicated exhibition space. In September 2017, the board announced that curator and educator Nicola Trezzi would succeed Edelsztein as director and chief curator, with Trezzi assuming the role in 2018. In June 2025, the center announced that Hila Cohen-Schneiderman would succeed Trezzi as director and chief curator, marking the third leadership transition in the institution's history.

CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo is explicitly a non-collecting institution, operating in the Kunsthalle model rather than as a museum with permanent holdings. Its program centers on commissioning and producing new work by living artists, particularly those from Israel. The center's activities span multiple formats and media, including solo and group exhibitions, performances, screenings, and public events. Recent programming has included projects such as Gilad Ratman's 2024 installation Plecos, which incorporated video, sound, programmed doors, and wet clay; Santiago Sierra's protest sign work NO rendered in Hebrew; and multidisciplinary performances by artists including Uri Duvdevani and the musical duo Ariel Alteratz and Ron Sheskin.

As a non-collecting institution, CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo does not maintain permanent holdings or a collection in the traditional museum sense. Its significance lies instead in the temporary projects it commissions and produces. Notable recent productions include Gilad Ratman's 2024 solo exhibition Plecos, an ambitious two-floor installation featuring Pleco fish as protagonists within an environment of video, sound, programmed doors, and wet clay. The center also collaborated with Santiago Sierra to produce a Hebrew-language version of his well-known NO protest sign, created in response to social unrest in Israel. In 2021, the center presented Jonathan Monk's Exhibit Model Six, The Tel Aviv Version, a project reflecting the artist's characteristic engagement with postwar and contemporary art history, particularly conceptual art, minimal art, and arte povera.

Since November 2005, CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo has occupied the Rachel and Israel Pollak Gallery at 2a Tsadok Hacohen Street in central Tel Aviv-Yafo, near the Carmel Market. The facility comprises a ground-floor gallery, a first-floor gallery, and a multipurpose space, totaling approximately 300 square meters of exhibition space. The venue's location in central Tel Aviv-Yafo places it in proximity to one of the city's major market districts.

CCA Tel Aviv-Yafo is located at 2a Tsadok Hacohen Street in central Tel Aviv-Yafo, close to the Carmel Market. The venue is open to the public six days a week. Visitors can reach the center via bus lines 18, 61, 82, 161, and 238, and parking is available at the Carmel parking lot at the intersection of Kalischer Street and HaCarmel Street. The institution operates under the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, which granted it the Pollak Gallery space in 2005. In addition to its exhibition program, the center administers the Rywkind Ben Zour Grant for Art, Education and Community, an annual 100,000 shekel donation initiated by board member Iris Rywkind Ben Zour and her spouse Eran Ben Zour to support the center's annual exhibition program and related educational and community activities.