The Associated Press runs a lengthy preview by Vanessa Gera on the forthcoming Museum of the History of Polish Jews, scheduled to open in 2013, between April and December.
Museum officials say it will open in stages, with educational and cultural programs starting in April to mark the 70th anniversary of the doomed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Then in December the heart of the museum is scheduled to open: a core exhibition of eight interactive multimedia galleries organized chronologically. Using diaries, memoirs, film footage and other original sources, the story will unfold in the voices of those living in the historical moment. […]
The museum’s central story of long life interrupted by tragedy is also carried in the striking architecture of the building, designed by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamaki. On the outside, it is a square box of glass panels and perforated copper that emits a sea-green hue across a vast park-like square. Its lines are simple, sharp. On the inside, visitors enter a soaring hall with undulating sand-colored walls rising in curves. The chasm shape stands as a metaphor for both the parting of the Red Sea – a reference to the Jewish Biblical past – and the rupture in history created by the Holocaust.