Review of the Jewish Museum Berlin

I recently visited the new Jewish Museum in Berlin, which opened with its permanent exhibition on September 9, 2001. I had mixed feelings about the experience: The building designed by Daniel Libeskind is a powerful work of art, but the content of the building - the exhibition itself - is weak in comparison.

I was intrigued by the museum when I first saw photos in Wallpaper* sometime in 2000. The building is a sharp, metallic lightning bolt, with cuts and bisections running throughout it. I remember thinking that it was visually striking and unique, yet wondering if it filled its purpose of being a functional museum as well.

After seeing the building first hand, I can definitely say that it works. It manages to feel chaotic, yet meticulously designed at the same time. The cuts through the building which appear random at first glance, are all strategically placed. Inside they create "voids" of dead space. The museum is the history of the Jewish people and the voids clearly represent the Jews killed in the Holocaust. It's a powerful, but not heavy-handed way to broach a difficult subject. In the largest void you stand at the bottom, looking up as it slices through the building to a skylight at the top. Covering the floor are hundreds of rusted pieces of steel plate roughly cut to look like faces. It's an eerie space which encourages quiet reflection.

The voids run thoughout the building which means that you are continually encountering them. Unfortunately, someone has decided to put a sign explaining Libeskind's intention with the void beside every window that looks onto a void. Even worse, its the same sign at each one of these windows. When you are in a museum, you get in the habit of reading every sign that you come across, and nothing is more irritating for me than reading the same thing over and over again.

When you are in a museum, you get in the habit of reading every sign that you come across, and nothing is more irritating for me than reading the same thing over and over again.

See?

Instead of quietly contemplating the voids as the architect intended, I am thinking about the annoying sign. I'm wondering who thought this repetion was necessary? It's as if they put a sign on the first void and out of some bizarre sense of consistency decided that if one window had a sign, they all had to have one.

This signage problem symbolizes the central problem of the museum: The overly rational approach of the curators clashes with the passionate, emotional approach of the architects.

This rational approach of the curators has also led to a very dry exhibit. It presents artifacts from the history of the Jewish people in a rigid, factual way. There is not enough discussion about the people and the culture that created these artifacts. Don't show me a massive old Torah and tell me the owner's name and the year it was made. I want to know how it survived intact for so long? How was it used? What's its story? If you extract the human story from the artifacts then you end up with you end up with just a bunch of old stuff.

By not focusing on the human element, the exhibit also missed the opportunity to present some of the more interesting aspects of Jewish culture. For example:

Food - I can't think of another religion that has more of an emphasis on food. There is everyday Jewish food (e.g. chulla, bagels, lox, humintaschen) and most holidays involve food in their rituals (e.g. matzo, gefilte fish, the seder plate). And there is the whole concept of kosher, which was only touched on. (There is a display of two sets of cookware with an explanation that one was for dairy and the other for meat.) I think they could have done more.

Music - There was considerable audio in the exhibit, but it was limited to personal narratives. At the few weddings and bar mitzvahs I've been to I was impressed with the musical elements of the ceremony. Having some examples of cantor's singing would be interesting for visitors that haven't been to a synagogue before. It would also be appreciated by visitors who don't speak German and cannot understand the personal narratives.

Language - There was some written Hebrew in Torah scrolls, but nothing spoken. Also no mention of Yiddish and its relationship to Hebrew, or its influence on other languages, such as German and English. Too bad.

The dry academic approach really became problematic for the section of the exhibit that dealt with the Holocaust. It started well, with personal stories of people killed in the Holocaust. But, as they trace anti-semitism through history they move back to the world of facts and figures. The Holocaust then becomes a chronological display of events. For example, "March 20, 1933: First concentration camp opens in Dachau." I agree that its useful to have this factual history book summary of events, but this is only the first step. The next step is interpretation and discussion as to why or how this happened. How did anti-semitism turn into the Holocaust? This is obviously a huge leap, and it's important (if not essential) for our continued existence on this planet to better understand this.

The other let down was the "multimedia" aspect of the exhibit. There was one room which was just a bunch of PCs hardwired to the exhibit web site. Conceptually, it makes sense to have a library where people can read detailed information on Jewish history, as there is only so much information you can print on the wall. But, in practice it means that your group splits up and everyone surfs alone at a machine until they get bored. Can't I surf the web by myself at home? Why do I want to do this at a museum? They could have worked on this concept more.

The other multimedia exhibits suffered from weak concepts, or weak implementation. One had a display showing a map Europe with a panel of buttons. Pressing the buttons was supposed to show you different movements of the Jews across Europe. Unfortunately, the animation just identified cities in sequence, with no description of what was being shown. Even worse, once an animation started, any other button presses were ignored until the animation was finished, so you were never able to connect the button presses with what you were looking at. This particular exhibit could have used a few more iterations in the design process.

Another depressingly bad "multimedia" exhibit was the goofy "Ja, Nein" terminals which had a screen and two huge buttons, a red one and a green one. On the screen was a single question like, "Is modern Germany a multi-cultural society?" You press a button (after you guess that green is "Ja" and Red is "Nein") and it tells you what percentage of people pushed each button. Assuming people correctly push the right button to express their opinion, who cares? It's just another meaningless statistic. The designer also decided to put question marks all over the interface so it looks light, almost "game show", and completely clashes with its surroundings.

As a whole, the experience is rather lumpy. It's clear that the architect, the curators, and the multimedia people worked completely separately. They certainly didn't share the same vision as there is no interplay between the different elements of the museum. Even worse, Daniel Libeskind's powerful vision for the museum ends up being diluted by the other groups' work.

For the two years between the completion of construction and the opening of the exhibition, the museum sat completely empty but still attracted 400,000 visitors. Sadly, I wish I was one of them.