A Jewish history museum being built in the Polish capital was due to choose an architect for the project this Thursday from among finalists who include prominent Americans Daniel Libeskind and Peter Eisenman.
Eleven artist teams submitted proposals for the Warsaw building to house the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, due to open in 2008. The museum will depict the Jewish life that had flourished for eight centuries in Poland before it was virtually wiped out under Nazi occupation.
On Thursday, an international panel of judges was choosing the final design for the building's exterior, deciding which best fits with the planned interior space that already has been designed for the permanent exhibition.
"This museum has been created from the inside out," said Ewa Junczyck-Ziomecka, the museum's director for development. The project has a budget of 100 million zlotys (US$30 million; -25 million,) she said.
The museum organizers believe the large museum will stand alongside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and Berlin's Jewish Museum as one of the world's pre-eminent museums devoted to Jewish history.
The judges selecting the winning design Thursday had no prior knowledge of which architects submitted which proposals, with each proposal made anonymously and assigned a number for identification, she said.
The museum will be built in a vast green space in downtown Warsaw next to a monument to the victims of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Although it will devote space to the Holocaust, it will focus on the centuries when Jews flourished in this central European land.
"Poland was the heart of the Jewish Diaspora for centuries, and it is a forgotten story," Junczyk-Ziomeck said. "The accomplishments of Polish Jewry - to the culture of Europe, to the founding of Israel, to culture in the United States - is so powerful and people are not aware of it."
The contenders are teams led by Libeskind, the designer of Berlin's Jewish Museum; Eisenman, creator of Berlin's new Holocaust memorial; Andrzej Bulanda and Wlodzimierz Mucha, Poland; David Chipperfield, Britain; Marek Dunikowski, Poland; Zvi Hecker, Israel and Germany; Kengo Kuma, Japan; Ilmari Lanhdelma and Rainer Mahiamaeki, Finland; Josep Lluis Mateo, Spain; Helena Casanova and Jesus Hernandez, the Netherlands; and Gesine Weinmiller, Germany.
|