Museums and Art of the Shoah: from Nathan Rapaport and Corrado Cagli to Richard Serra

Art and museums of the Shoah

Paolo CoenUniversity of Calabriapaolocoen.blogspot.itgdmuniversita.blogspot.it

Theodor von Adorno

To write a poem after Auschwitz is an act of barbarism

Theodor von Adorno

Günther Grass

Perennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tortured man has to scream.

Theodor von Adorno

Papers’s general outline

Art of the Shoah: Witnessing

Art of the Shoah: Reflection and Self Inspiration

Museology and the Shoah

Art of the Shoah: Witnessing

Corrado Cagli

Alexander Bogen

Alexander Bogen

To be creative in the situation of the Holocaust, this is also a protest Each man when he is standing face to face with cruel danger, with death, reacts in his way. The artist reacts with his means. This is his protest! This is my means! He reacts in an artistic way. This is his weapon. He must leave his mark as a mensch on mankind. This, it shows that the Germans could not break his spirit.

Alexander Bogen

Nathan Rapoport

Marek Suzin, architect – Nathan Rapoport, sculptor, Memorial of the

Ghetto Uprising, 1948, Warsaw

Nathan Rapoport, Exile (The Last March of Treblinka), 1948, Warsaw, Monument to the Ghetto Uprining

December 7, 1970: West Germany’s Prime Minister Willy Brandt kneeling in front of

Rapport’s monument. “Should Brandt knee?” asks Der Spiegel.

Primo Levi, Lodovico Belgioioso for BBPR,Pupino Samonà, Luigi Nono and Nelo Risi, Italian Memorial, 1980 Auschwitz I, Block

21

It's old wisdom, and so already had warned Heinrich Heine, both jew and German: who burns books ends by burning men as well, violence is a seed that will not be extinguished. Primo Levi

June 6, 2012 - Italian Football National Team visits

Auschwitz-Birkenau, ahead of Euro 2012

So everything was true…Gianluigi Buffon,

Italy’s goalkeeper, walking in Auschwitz II

Pupino Samonà, Italian Memorial, detail,

Auschwitz I, Block 21

Art of the Shoah: Reflection and Self Inspiration

Alberto Burri

Jean Fautrier

Antoni Tàpies

Richard Serra

Richard Serra, Walking is measuring, 2000, Oporto Serralves Museum of

Contemporary Art

Richard Serra, Splashed metal performances, 1966-1968

Richard Serra, Splah Pieces, 1968

Richard Serra, The Drowned and the Saved, 1992,

Kolumba Museum, Cologne

Richard Serra, Gravity, 1993, United States

Holocaust Museum and Memorial

Richard Serra, Gravity, Washington, USHMM

Richard Serra – Peter Eisenmann, Field of Stelae,

(Memorial of killed Jews of Europa), Berlin

Richard Serra, Stelae, New York Gagosian

Richard Serra, Tilted Arc, once Federal Plaza, New York

Richard Serra – Peter Eisenmann, Field of Stelae,

(Memorial of killed Jews of Europa), Berlin

Stommeln Synagogue’s Art Project

Gerard Dornseifer, first curator of the art project in Stommeln’s

historical synagogue

Synagogue, Stommeln (Cologne)

Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1991, Stommeln,

Synagogue

Richard Serra, The Drowned and the Saved, 1992, first installation in the

synagogue of Stommeln

Daniel Buren, Multiplication, 2010, Stommeln, Synagogue

The exhibition Mirroring Evil

Maurizio Cattelan, Him, collection François Pinault

Maurizio Cattelan, Him, collection François Pinault

The Jewish Museum, New York, seat of Mirroring Evil

Norman Kleeblatt, curator of Mirroring Evil

Victims, perpetrators, bystanders Jonathan Littell

Victims, perpetrators, bystanders Nir Baram

Museology and the Shoah

Museums built on the sites of memory

Museums of single local Jewish communities or of the Jewish people assumed as a whole

Museums of the Shoah, or Holocaust Museums

Museums built on the sites of memory

Main Cathegory: Memorial

Main example: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Museums of local Jewish communities, of Jewish communities of a single nation,or of the Jewish people intended as a whole

Main cathegory: Etnology; Etnography

Main examples: Jüdisches Museum, Frankfurt Jüdische Museum, Berlin Beit Hatfutsot, Tel Aviv

Museums of the Shoah, or Holocaust MuseumsMain cathegory: History

Main examples: Yad Vashem, JerusalemUnited States Holocaust Museum and Memorial, Washington

Holocaust Museums in today’s world

Holocaust Museums’s Prototypes

1948 - Israel Katnelson Museum of the Holocaust, Kibbutz Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, or Ghetto Fighters House, between Akko e Naharya, Israel

1953 - Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

1968 - Holocaust Museum, Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, 20 km south of Ashkelon, Israel

Holocaust Museums after 1989

1993 - Holocaust Museum (now Museum of Jewish Heritage), New York

1993 - Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles

1993 - United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial, Washington1996 – Holocaust Museum, Houston

Latest Holocaust Museums

2000 – The Holocaust permanent exhibition, Imperial War Museum, London

2000 – Jüdisches Museum, Berlin [first and second accrochage]

2005 – Musem and Memorial of Killed Jews of Europe, Berlin

2009 – Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre, Skokie, Chicago

2010 – The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, Los Angeles

Holocaust Museums under construction

Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem

Holocaust Museum and Tolerance Center, Dallas

Museum of the Shoah, Rome

Israel Katnelson Museum of the Holocaust, 1949, Kibbutz Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, between Akko e Naharya,

Israel

Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martyrs’s and Heroes’s Memorial Remembrance Authorithy), 1953, Jerusalem

Holocaust Museum, 1968, Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, 15 km south of Ashkelon, Israel

Moshe Safdie, The historical addition, Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Martyrs’s and Heroes’s Memorial Remembrance Authorithy), Jerusalem

dDaniel Liebeskind, Detail, Jüdisches Museum Berlin

Richard Serra, Gravity, 1993, USHMM

Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo, The Holocaust Museum, 1993, New York

“To restore freedom”: the connection of the Holocaust Museum with Ellis Island’s memorial,

the Statue of Liberty and Nathan Rapoport’s Liberation in Ronald Reagan’s political

perspective.

James Ingo Freed, Main Façade, United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial, 1993,

Washington DC

Yaffa Eliach, The Tower of Names, United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial, Washington D.C.

The Holocaust permanent exhibition, 2000,

London, Imperial War Museum

The Holocaust permanent exhibition, 2000, London,

Imperial War Museum

Richard Serra – Peter Eisenman, Denkmal und Museum für ermordeten Juden Europas (Memorial and Museum of killed Jews of Europe), 2005, Berlin

Stanley Tigerman, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre, 2009,

Skokie, Chicago

Stanley Tigerman, Illinois Holocaust Museum and

Education Centre, 2009, Skokie, Chicago

Luca Zevi, Museo della Shoah, forthcoming, Rome

Luca Zevi, Museo della Shoah, Rome, forthcoming