This document discusses the art and architecture related to the Holocaust (Shoah). It covers major themes like how art documented and reflected on the Holocaust over time. It also analyzes the rise of Holocaust museums after 1989 and how their approach has evolved from being located at extermination camps to new dedicated buildings. The document warns that institutionalizing and over exposing the Holocaust memory risks issues like "pop Shoah" and demonization. It concludes that there is legitimate Holocaust-related art and new types of dedicated Holocaust museums have become interconnected with contemporary art and historical museums.

1. Art and Architecture of the Shoah.
Open Problems
Paolo Coen - Università della Calabria
paolocoen.blogspot.it

2. Chapter 0 - Prologue

3. The Rothko Chapel
Houston, Texas

4. Fourteen Black Paintings by
Mark Rothko, 1969

10. Peter Gabriel, Fourteen Black Paintings, from the
album US, 1992

12. Chapter I – The Crisis

13. The crisis of the modern Man.
The philophical and ethical
dimension of nihilism and
existentialism

23. Chapter II – Art of the Shoah: Witnessing and
Documenting

24. Art of the Shoah: witnessing and
professionally reinterpreting

25. Dority Weiser, It’s not in the Ghetto, made in
Therezin’concentration Camp, now at the Holocaust Art
Museum of Yad Vashem, Jerusalem

26. Alexander Bogen

31. Corrado Cagli

34. Corrado Cagli, Buchenwald, 1945

37. Chapter III – Art of the Shoah: reflection and self-
inspiration

38. Jannis Kounellis, Untitled, 1991-1992, Stommeln,
Synagogue

39. Richard Serra, The Drowned and the
Saved, 1991, first installation Stommeln
Synagogue, 1992, since 1992 Kolumba
Museum, Cologne

44. Maurizio Cattelan, Him, 2001

45. Maurizio Cattelan, Him, 2001, when installed in the
Warzaw Ghetto, 2012

46. Chapter IV – ‘An act of barbarism’?

47. After 1945:
The death of the art?
Theodor von Adorno:
“To write a poem after Auschwitz
is an act of barbarism”.

48. Incapacity, or difficulty for the
world of the arts to accept the
aesthetic, poetic and art historical
dimensions of the Memory of the
Shoah.

49. Consequence: a general state of
misconception, minimalization
and delegitimization of the Art
of the Shoah.

50. 1998-2005
Denkmal [und Museum] für ermordeten Juden Europas,
i.e. Memorial [and Museum] for the Murdered
European Jews

51. Chapter V – After 1989

52. After 1945:
“And the world remained silent” (Elie Wiesel)

53. After 1989:
and the world never stopped talking (and filming,
instituzionalizing, researching, etc.)

54. 1993: Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List

55. A highly institutionalized
memory

56. Chapter VI – Museums, Museums, Museums

57. The official musealization of the
Memory

58. . Museums of single Jewish communities and/or of
the Jewish people
. The ‘sanctuaries’ of the Memory, i.e. Museums
housed on/in extermination camps, prisons or
concentration camps
. Holocaust Museums, i.e. museums housed away
from the places of suffering, usually in new and
highly stylized architectures

59. Beit Hatfustot, Tel Aviv, Israel

60. . Museums of single Jewish communities and/or of
the Jewish people
. The ‘sanctuaries’ of the Memory, i.e. Museums
housed on/in extermination camps, prisons or
concentration camps
. Holocaust Museums, i.e. museums housed away
from the places of suffering, usually in new and
highly stylized architectures

61. The National Museum of
Auschwitz

62. . Museums of single Jewish communities and/or of
the Jewish people
. The ‘sanctuaries’ of the Memory, i.e. Museums
housed on/in extermination camps, prisons or
concentration camps
. Holocaust Museums, i.e. museums housed away
from the places of suffering, usually in new and
highly stylized architectures

63. Holocaust Museums after 1989

64. Israeli prototypes
 Beit Lohamei Haghetaot, or Ghetto Fighter’s House, betw.
Akko and Naharya (1948)
 Yad Vashem, Jerusalem (1953)
 Yad Mordechai, nearAshkelon (1968)

65. Holocaust Museums after 1989
 United States Holocaust Museum and
Memorial, Washington (1993)
 Holocaust Museum, New York (1993)
 Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles (1993)
 Holocaust Museum, Houston (1996)
 The Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War
Museum, Londra (2000)
 Jüdisches Museum, Berlino (2000)

66. Gli ultimi musei della Shoah
 Memorial [and Museum] for murdered European Jews,
Berlin (2005)
 Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Centre,
Skokie, Chicago (2009)
 The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, Los
Angeles (2010)

67. Upcoming Holocaust Museums
 Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem
 Dallas Holocaust Museum and Tolerance Center,
Dallas
 Museum of the Shoah, Rome

68. Chapter VII - Consequences

69. Institutionalization Massification
Divulgation
Scholarization

70. Overexposure
Shoah-business
‘Pop Shoah’
‘Pornograhy’
Demonization

71. The tyranny of History,
supposedly as the sole antidote to
an overwhelming pop Memory

72. Chapter VIII - Showdown

73. What we’ve learned up to now?
• There IS an art connected to the Shoah,
which is interconnected to the world of
contemporary art
• There IS a new and special class of
museums, named Museums of the Shoah,
which is interconnected to historical
museums

74. paolocoen.blogspot.it