Austria -- Vienna Jewish Museum Reopening

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

Just a brief note -- the Jewish Museum in Vienna re-opened Tuesday after being closed for about a year for a fullscale -- and controversial -- restoration and revamping of its exhibition. I have yet to see it, but the next time I go to Vienna (probably in early December) I will make sure to give a full report, as I am very curious to see the new facility. The opening (temporary) exhibition is a sure-fire crowd pleaser on 100 years of Jewish experience in Hollywood...

Here's a video of the opening ceremony:

The Jewish Museum Vienna is now open - Welcome back! from Jewish Museum Vienna on Vimeo.



As for now, according to one brief (and dry) article:

Not only the technical infrastructure and visitor facilities were renovated, but visitors will also be offered new and exciting insights into the collections − of Jewish past and present − as well as a new atelier for children and several other services.

Visitors will get to know whom the Jewish Museum Vienna has to thank for its collections and take a virtual tour through the synagogues that existed in Vienna before 1938. They will also be invited to view the new permanent exhibition, but also to Hollywood − the location where the first temporary exhibition will take place. This will be an introduction to the founding fathers of the film metropolis, the men who left their shtetl in Galicia and Ukraine to invent the American dream in Hollywood. This journey will take one across 100 years of Hollywood and trace this Jewish experience as far as the present."

I posted here earlier this year about the controversy over the museum renovation, in the process of which the holograms that had formed part of the museum's historic exhibition, mounted in 1994, were destroyed during their removal.