Our group is concentrating on the Jewish museums in Berlin and New York. We are looking at their exhibit styles, effectiveness of presentation, and the impact that architecture has on the overall message of the museum.
The Jewish Museum Berlin exhibits the social, political and cultural history of Jewish people in Germany from the fourth century to the present day. Museum director Michael Blumenthal stated: “We want to show German Jews as part of German history, as living, creative, contributing members of this society and not only as victims.” The original Jewish Museum was founded in 1933 on Oranienburger Strasse, but was closed in 1938 under National Socialist rule of Germany. In the 1970s interest was expressed in reviving the Jewish Museum, and in 1978 a Jewish section of the Berlin Museum was introduced. The Jewish Museum became an independent institution in 1999. In its current form, it is divided into two buildings. The “Old Building,” which was constructed in 1735 as Collegienhaus of the Supreme Court of Prussia, houses temporary exhibitions, a restaurant, the Museum Shop, and the visitor information center.
The newer, 120,000 square foot Libeskind Building was completed in January of 1999. The empty building saw 350,000 visitors between 1999 and the museum’s opening to the public with exhibits in September of 2001. Daniel Libeskind, an American architect of Polish Jewish background, won a competition against 165 other architects to design the new extension of the Jewish Museum. Construction of the museum cost the city of Berlin $40 million, and was Libeskind’s first major completed project.
Libeskind – biographical info. He was born in Lodz Poland in 1946 and emigrated to New York at the age of 13 after spending two years in Tel Aviv. He received his education in architecture at Cooper Union, which is the most competitive engineering school in the United States. Upon completing his education, Libeskind specialized in deconstructionist architecture and taught at the collegiate level in Michigan and Italy. He was relatively unknown in the world of architecture when his submission for the Jewish Museum was received and selected.
The architectural style of the Jewish Museum is described on its official web page as “one of the most spectacular museum buildings in Germany,” and has sparked a great deal of discussion and speculation from visitors and scholars. Libeskind stated in 2000 that the Jewish Museum is “like other museums, with white walls where pictures can be hung and objects exhibited,” yet his design places great emphasis on people’s perceptions of the building.
The unique building structure of the Jewish Museum Berlin is impossible to ignore and some argue that the architectural style of the Libeskind Building plays an equal role as its actual content. Ruth Klüger said during our class together that she thought the unusual architecture and exhibit style of the Jewish Museum had a sort of Disneyland effect in that it detracted from the seriousness of the message presented. Former museum research director Michael Cullen expressed similar concern that that museum would become a “PT Barnum kind of place.”
Positive evaluations of the Libeskind Building praise the ambiguity and openness to interpretation its architecture provides. Though some argued that the museum would be better off left empty to evoke the suffering and loss of Jews in Europe, the exhibits received positive feedback as well. Susannah Reid of Newcastle University thought that the Jewish Museum offered a welcome change from traditional museums. She said: “The exhibitions may not satisfy subject specialists or museum traditionalists, however this museum has always stated that it aims to appeal to a broad international audience, which is exactly what it does.”
The Libeskind building was opened as an empty shell, naked of any museological objects or exhibits for 2-3 years.
10,000 visitors a month happily paid five Deutschmarks each to be guided through an empty building!!
This effectively proves that the building is not only the museum object, it is also itself a museum object - it is not only the form, but also part of the contents.
The Facade
Completely coated in zinc, a material that has a long tradition in Berlin's architectural history.
Over the years, the untreated alloy of titanium and zinc will oxidize and change color through exposure to light and weather
Throughout the design we see a theme of lines or axes
The Matrix
The form, geometry and shape of the building came from an “invisible matrix of connections,” which resulted from the architect's plotting the addresses of prominent Jewish and German citizens on a map of pre-war Berlin, in a way that resembled a distorted star, “like the yellow star that was so frequently worn on this very site.”
The tortured form of the zigzag embodies all the violence, all the ruptures of the history of Jews in Germany, and is mostly guided by this matrix, but also, for example, by the presence of a tree which makes the building change directions.
The lines which resulted from Libeskind's projecting the matrix onto the museum can be called the “line of connectedness,” (symbolizing the cultural exchange between Jews and non-Jews and the ways in which they influenced each other), and serves as the basis for the position of the windows or slits.
“At the same time that there was this actual visible site, I felt that there was an invisible matrix of connections, a connection of relationships between figures of Germans and Jews. Even though the competition was held before the Wall fell, I felt that the one binding feature which crossed East and West was the relationship of Germans to Jews. Certain people, workers, writers, composers, artists, scientists and poets formed the link between Jewish tradition and German culture. I found this connection and I plotted an irrational matrix which would yield reference to the emblematic of a compressed and distorted star: the yellow star that was so frequently worn on this very site.”
“The Jewish Museum is based on the invisible figures whose traces constitute the geometry of the building.”
Between the Lines
There's two main lines: The first one is a winding (zig-zag) one with several kinks (comprising the main body of the museum) while the second line cuts through the whole building. In the picture below you can see it marked on the roof with skylights:
"The official name of the project is 'Jewish Museum' but I have named it 'Between the Lines' because for me it is about two lines of thinking, organization and relationship. One is a straight line, but broken into many fragments, the other is a tortuous line, but continuing indefinitely."
The Voids
At the intersections between these two lines there are empty spaces called "Voids," which rise vertically from the ground floor of the building up to the roof.
Five of them run vertically through the New Building (One is the entrance).
They have walls of bare concrete, are not heated or air-conditioned and are largely without artificial light, quite separate from the rest of the building.
On the upper levels of the exhibition, the Voids are clearly visible and have black exterior walls.
The voids can be interpreted not only as representing the void left by the close desctruction of Jewish culture in Germany, but as the negation of the very idea of a museum (there's nothing to see through the slits through which you can see into the voids)
Interestingly, the sealed part, the part you cannot experience, was the most expensive part to build! So Libeskind had to really justify this “waste of space” to bureacrauts who ultimately approved his project. Clearly, it was "necessary" for the museum to work.
“The Void is the impenetrable emptiness across which the absence of Berlin's Jewish citizens is made apparent to the visitor.”
"Cutting through the form of the Jewish Museum is a Void, a straight line whose impenetrability forms the central focus around which the exhibitions are organized. In order to cross from one space of the Museum to the other, the visitors traverse sixty bridges which open into the Void space; the embodiment of absence.”
"The Museum's Voids refer to that which can never be exhibited when it comes to Jewish Berlin history: humanity reduced to ashes."
“I find myself drawn to explore what I call the void – the presence of an overwhelming emptiness creaed when a community is wiped out, or individual freedom is stmped out; when the continuity of life is so brutally disrupted that the structure of life is forever torqued and transformed”
Schalechet (Fallen Leaves) and the Void of Memory
Done by Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman, on loan from Dieter and Si Rosenkranz
It covers the entire floor of one of the five Voids, and it can be reached through an empty exhibition space called the “Void of Memory”
Schalechet invites visitors to walk upon over 10,000 open-mouthed faces coarsely cut from heavy, circular iron plates cover the floor - literally walking on people's faces
It powerfully compliments the spatial feel of the Voids. While these serve as an architectural expression of the irretrievable loss of the Jews murdered in Europe, Schalechet is the only void filled by the victims - their memories
The Two Buildings
Like Jewish and German history, the old and the new museum buildings seem to exist autonomically, independent from each other, but deep down they are connected
In fact, the new building can ONLY be entered through the Old building, as it does not have a separate public entrance – apart from that to the ground-floor special exhibition hall
The staircase that connects the 2 buildings is in the first of the 6 voids.
Underground Axes
There are three underground axes
The first and longest one, called the "Axis of Continuity," is the main corridor which connects the old building to the new one and to the main staircase (Sackler Staircase)
It is meant to symbolize the continuation of Berlin's Jewish life
There are 2 crossroads that lead off the main one. Their floor is somewhat more steeply inclined, while the ceiling remains constant, so that they decrease in height towards the end.
These paths, to the exile garden and into the holocaust tower, lead beyond the contours of the new building and rely on their own intrinsic geometry.
All three of the underground axes intersect, symbolizing the connection between the three realities of Jewish life in Germany.
The "Axis of Emigration" and the Garden of Exile
This axis leads outside to daylight and the Garden of Exile
A heavy door must be opened before the crucial step into the garden can be taken
This is the only path leading to the outside world from below ground – evoking the idea of exile as the only way to freedom.
In the garden, 49 concrete pilars rise out of a square plot
The whole garden is on a 12° gradient and disorientates visitors, giving them a sense of the total instability and lack of orientation experienced by those driven out of Germany
The columns which are perpendicular to the sloping paving do induce a feeling of dizziness, and make the surrounding buildings appear to totter
It's a 7X7 columns square, 7 being a very significant number in Jewish religion
48 of these columns are filled with the earth of Berlin and stand for 1948 – the formation of the state of Israel
The one central column contains the earth of Jerusalem and stands for Berlin itself.
Willow oak grows on top of the pillars symbolizing hope, a modern inversion of the ancient motif of Eden
There are rose arbours around the garden – the thorny rose, a symbol of life, can both injure and reconcile. Roses were the only plants permitted in the ancient city of Jerusalem.
Attempts "to completely disorientate the visitor. It represents a shipwreck of history."
The "Axis of the Holocaust" and the Holocaust Tower
The "Axis of the Holocaust" is a dead end. It becomes ever narrower and darker and ends at the Holocaust Tower.
The Holocaust Tower is the only void outside the Museum building
The bare concrete tower is empty, 24 meters high, and neither heated nor insulated. It is lit by a single narrow slit high above the ground. If light represents hope, then it is distant and unreachable. Noises from the outside world are clearly audible but the normality they effuse is unreachable.
“Inside this place we are cut off from the everyday life of the city outside and from a view of that city. We can hear sounds and see light but we cannot reach the outside world. So it was for those confined before and during deportation and in the camps themselves”
GREAT VIDEOS ON THE ARCHITECTURE:
They include comments by Libeskind
(3 parts)
1/3
2/3
3/3
Exhibits/Content
Mark
-Talk about how material is presented in exhibits
-Discuss style as related to effectiveness of content
Brief Comments on the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City
The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City portrays a very American view of the Holocaust, emphasizing this country's role in 1) liberating the concentration camps and 2) becoming the perfect destination for emigration out of Europe. This is done partly through the architecture: the first 2 floors are dark, talk about life in Europe and the Holocaust, but then the visitr reaches the third floor, which has a huge window facing the statue of Liberty
Discussion
Negative Criticisms of the Jewish Museum in Berlin:
-Ruth Klüger: Uneven floors and interactive exhibits are Disneyland-like
-Michael Cullen: Danger of museum becoming “PT Barnum kind of place” due to its architectural style
Positive
-Emptiness of the exhibit demonstrates the sparseness and void left by the Holocaust
-Susannah Reid: Museum’s appeal to international audience is highly successful despite non-traditional perspective
In a way, I (Melina) thought and mentioned during our discussion, that the Museum of Jewish History in New York sets itself up for harsher criticisim than the one in Berlin. The very pro-American 'bias' is obvious and, while neither museum in perfect, the one in Berlin in a way departs from that idea precisely. It deconstructs the idea of a museum with voids etc. and says: there are things which cannot be represented in the space of a museum.
Someone made a very good point when they mentioned that, for them, the Jewish Museum in Berlin also can be criticized for having enclosed the telling of Jewish History in a building that represents only one part of it: the Holocaust. This is the lense through which we are invited to see everything inside it.
In a way, Berlin being the city from which the orders to execute the Holocaust were given, one could argue that this is the right lense. Most people who come to this museum are aware of the Holocaust, and it represents a reality: that's what's on most people's minds when they decide to visit a Jewish museum in Germany (I believe). I (Melina) at least, being honest about how I felt, must admit that I was expecting the museum to be a statement of mea culpa. I saw everything from that lense before I even knew what the museum looked like and any lesser emphasis on the Holocaust would have seemed... wrong (to me!). I think they kept in mind that many Jews would feel that way.
Maria mentioned this other museum in Germany (Frankfurt?), where the history of the Holocaust is only shown in one room or so, and people complained: are you trying to hide something?...
In any other country, however, the emphasis on the Holocaust would have probably bothered me more.
Also, we should keep in mind that we picked the architecture tour before we did anything else, and so the relationship between the architecture and the Holocaust was on our minds more as we walked around. A list of other tours offered can be found here
Maria commented on how, at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, you start from the Holocaust, then go to the pre-Holocaust history, just to end up again with the Holocaust. Showing it last seems to indicate that Jewish life in Germany ends there. In the museum in NYC, you might start with the Holocaust but then you go up towards the light which is the post-Holocaust period.
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