Art and Architecture of the Shoah. Open Problems

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Chapter 0 - Prologue

The Rothko ChapelHouston, Texas

Fourteen Black Paintings by Mark Rothko, 1969

Peter Gabriel, Fourteen Black Paintings, from the album US, 1992

Chapter I – The Crisis

The crisis of the modern Man. The philophical and ethical dimension of nihilism and

existentialism

Chapter II – Art of the Shoah: Witnessing and Documenting

Art of the Shoah: witnessing and professionally reinterpreting

Dority Weiser, It’s not in the Ghetto, made in Therezin’concentration Camp, now at the Holocaust Art

Museum of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

Alexander Bogen

Corrado Cagli

Corrado Cagli, Buchenwald, 1945

Chapter III – Art of the Shoah: reflection and self-inspiration

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1991-1992, Stommeln,

Synagogue

Richard Serra, The Drowned and the Saved, 1991, first installation Stommeln Synagogue, 1992, since 1992 Kolumba

Museum, Cologne

Maurizio Cattelan, Him, 2001

Maurizio Cattelan, Him, 2001, when installed in the Warzaw Ghetto, 2012

Chapter IV – ‘An act of barbarism’?

After 1945: The death of the art?

Theodor von Adorno:“To write a poem after Auschwitz

is an act of barbarism”.

Incapacity, or difficulty for the world of the arts to accept the aesthetic, poetic and art historical dimensions of the Memory of the Shoah.

Consequence: a general state of misconception, minimalization and delegitimization of the Art

of the Shoah.

1998-2005 Denkmal [und Museum] für ermordeten Juden Europas, i.e. Memorial [and Museum] for the Murdered European Jews

Chapter V – After 1989

After 1945:“And the world remained silent” (Elie Wiesel)

After 1989: and the world never stopped talking (and filming, instituzionalizing, researching, etc.)

1993: Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List

A highly institutionalized memory

Chapter VI – Museums, Museums, Museums

The official musealization of the Memory

. Museums of single Jewish communities and/or of the Jewish people

. The ‘sanctuaries’ of the Memory, i.e. Museums housed on/in extermination camps, prisons or concentration camps

. Holocaust Museums, i.e. museums housed away from the places of suffering, usually in new and highly stylized architectures

Beit Hatfustot, Tel Aviv, Israel

. Museums of single Jewish communities and/or of the Jewish people

. The ‘sanctuaries’ of the Memory, i.e. Museums housed on/in extermination camps, prisons or concentration camps

. Holocaust Museums, i.e. museums housed away from the places of suffering, usually in new and highly stylized architectures

The National Museum of Auschwitz

. Museums of single Jewish communities and/or of the Jewish people

. The ‘sanctuaries’ of the Memory, i.e. Museums housed on/in extermination camps, prisons or concentration camps

. Holocaust Museums, i.e. museums housed away from the places of suffering, usually in new and highly stylized architectures

Holocaust Museums after 1989

Israeli prototypes

Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, or Ghetto Fighter’s House, betw. Akko and Naharya (1948)

Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (1953) Yad Mordechai, nearAshkelon (1968)

Holocaust Museums after 1989

United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial, Washington (1993)

Holocaust Museum, New York (1993) Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles (1993) Holocaust Museum, Houston (1996) The Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War

Museum, Londra (2000) Jüdisches Museum, Berlino (2000)

Gli ultimi musei della Shoah

Memorial [and Museum] for murdered European Jews, Berlin (2005)

Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre, Skokie, Chicago (2009)

The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, Los Angeles (2010)

Upcoming Holocaust Museums

Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem Dallas Holocaust Museum and Tolerance Center,

Dallas Museum of the Shoah, Rome

Chapter VII - Consequences

Institutionalization MassificationDivulgation

Scholarization

OverexposureShoah-business

‘Pop Shoah’‘Pornograhy’Demonization

The tyranny of History, supposedly as the sole antidote to

an overwhelming pop Memory

Chapter VIII - Showdown

What we’ve learned up to now?

• There IS an art connected to the Shoah, which is interconnected to the world of contemporary art

• There IS a new and special class of museums, named Museums of the Shoah, which is interconnected to historical museums

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