Museums – Excerpted

“They made a museum that among other things would capture the artifacts of what they imagined might become an endangered species: the diaspora Jewish community”

10 January 20167 January 2016 Drew KaplanMuseums

We changed our name, dropping “Diaspora” and calling ourselves The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot. We are working on changing our exhibits and the physical space. We are also creating a global[…]

“The American memorial style is powerful as an engine of pathos, but is obviously limited as a language of representation”

25 January 201520 January 2015 Drew KaplanMuseums

On the one hand, no agreed-on figural style can any longer represent a society so plural and so quick to take offense at “partial” representations; a sublime minimalist reticence seems the best we can do.[…]

“Minimalism….has become the most potent language of the elegiac and the evocative”

11 September 201410 September 2014 Drew KaplanMuseums

Minimalism, which began as the model of an inexpressive style, a rejection of symbol for pure structure, has become the most potent language of the elegiac and the evocative, the one common basis with which[…]

“Those who lack faith in fixed order and stable places have a harder time building monuments that must…be monolithically stable and certain”

31 August 20149 August 2014 Drew KaplanMuseums

Those who lack faith in fixed order and stable places have a harder time building monuments that must, in their nature, be monolithically stable and certain. Happiness writes white, and pluralism builds poorly. An obelisk[…]

“Liberal cities have not found it self-evident that their massacres should be enshrined in memorials and museums”

30 July 201430 July 2014 Drew KaplanMuseums

[L]iberal cities have not found it self-evident that their massacres should be enshrined in memorials and museums. There is no imposing memorial or museum in London dedicated to the Blitz, in which more than forty[…]

Similarity in the 9/11 Memorial Museum and Holocaust Museums

15 July 201415 July 2014 Drew KaplanMuseums

The 9/11 Memorial Museum…is what future architectural historians will recognize as a specific late-twentieth-century building type: the Holocaust museum. … There are now more than seventy such museums around the world. A muted or off-center[…]

Excerpted

Excerpts of Interest

Category: Museums

“They made a museum that among other things would capture the artifacts of what they imagined might become an endangered species: the diaspora Jewish community”

“The American memorial style is powerful as an engine of pathos, but is obviously limited as a language of representation”

“Minimalism….has become the most potent language of the elegiac and the evocative”

“Those who lack faith in fixed order and stable places have a harder time building monuments that must…be monolithically stable and certain”

“Liberal cities have not found it self-evident that their massacres should be enshrined in memorials and museums”

Similarity in the 9/11 Memorial Museum and Holocaust Museums