USA: Eldridge Street Synagogue Installs New Stained Glass Window

New York, NY. Eldridge Street Synagogue, views of Ark wall with 1944 windows, and design, installation and projection of new window by Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans. Photos: Courtesy of Museum at Eldridge Street.

USA: Eldridge Street Synagogue Installs New Stained Glass Window

Tomorrow - October 10, 2010 - the Museum at Eldridge Street in New York City will introduce a monumental new stained-glass window by artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans. This permanent artwork is, in the words of museum's website, "the culminating piece of our 24-year, award-winning restoration of the 1887 Eldridge Street Synagogue, a New York City and National Historic Landmark. The introduction of this installation in our historic sacred site marries the new and the old, and places the museum at the crossroads of art, architecture, history and preservation."

See and hear on video Smith and Gans discuss their concept by clicking here.

The new design will replace a tablet-shaped glass block window, introduced in 1944 after the original stained glass was damaged. At the time, the congregation did not have funds to return it to its original grandeur. The treatment of the replacement in the course of restoration of the entire 19th century synagogue interior highlighted a classic preservation dilemma: How do you treat an important design element that has been lost or altered, and does every phase of a building's history have equal value in the conservation/preservation process.

The Museum staff met with leading architects, preservationists, historians and curators to help decide how to treat the window. I was, in a small way part of this process, when I gave a lecture at Eldridge on the "The Choices We Make." For the Museum, the choices were retain the 1944 glass block, attempt to "replicate" a lost window the original design of which remains unknown, make something new "in the style of" the 1880s, or to create something new and admit it as such. In the end, the latter course was chosen, with the caveat that whatever was new would harmonize with the old. Overall in the tot la restoration of the building the past was well served. There was nothing wrong with acknowledging the present, and looking to the future. According to Robert Tierney, Chairman, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, "With the [upcoming] installation of Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans extraordinary window in this sacred landmark, Eldridge Street's evolution now spans three generations built in the 19th century, preserved in the 20th, and renewed in the 21st." I have frequently written about the Eldridge Street Synagogue project, begun in the 1980s, on just completed last year.

Here are some of the events associated with the window installation:

This Sunday, October 10 marks the first day the new stained-glass window will be open to the public.

Open House from 11am to 4pm

Concert at 4:30pm

Wednesday, October 13 from 6:30 to 8:30pm

Museum at Eldridge Street Benefit

Tickets are $500 & $1,000. RSVP is required.

Honoring Kiki Smith & Deborah Gans and with dedication remarks by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and writer Adam Gopnik and music by Paul Shapiro’s Hester Street Orchestra.

Wednesday, November 17 at 6:30pm

Conversation with Kiki Smith & Deborah Gans

$20 adults; $15 students/seniors

Join Kiki Smith and Deborah Gans for a behind-the-scenes look into their vision and process for the Museum at Eldridge Street’s magnificent new stained-glass window.

Los Angeles Holocaust Museum. Photos: Belzberg Architects.
See more photos here.

USA: In Los Angeles, a New (and another) Holocaust Museum Opens

The Jewish journal.com reports that a new Holocaust museum will open in Los Angeles next week. While many people assume that the Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance serves as LA's memorial center for Shoah victims and educational center for Shoah victims, that is not really proved to be the case. The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust which traces its origins to 1961, really fills that role. It now finally has a permanent and notable home, designed by Hagy Belzberg and Belzberg Architects, a small (12) firm of unconventional designers committed to green design. Belzberg and the musuem already won the Design Concept Award from the 38th Annual Los Angeles Architectural Awards (2008). Belzberg is also the architect of the Southern California Center for Jewish Life now in the planning and fund raising stage in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Holocaust museums: L.A. and the rest of the world
by Jonah Lowenfeld

Next weekend, the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust publicly opens the plate-glass doors of its brand-new home at the northwest corner of Pan Pacific Park for the first time. Observant visitors might be drawn to the building’s grass-covered roof, or the retro-futuristic shape of the windows, or the repeated use of triangles in a design that seems to nod to the six three-sided black pillars of the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument that sit just outside the museum.

Indeed, L.A.-based architect Hagy Belzberg’s design for the new museum does not look like many other buildings in Los Angeles. Belzberg’s design performs an admirable artistic and political feat: It has nestled a small museum inside a popular and much-utilized public park without raising many hackles among neighborhood residents. And the result is a handsome new home for the collections, with an unbeatable address.

Belzberg’s building doesn’t look much like other Holocaust museums, either. Over the past 20 years, cities around the world have erected structures that attempt to preserve and disseminate Holocaust memory through designs by some of the world’s most prominent architects. Each of these Holocaust museums and memorials bears the unique imprint of its architect, while responding to all the usual architectural challenges — relating to the site, budget and local politics, among others. And Belzberg’s museum is no exception. To best understand the new museum, though, it helps to be familiar with a few of its most influential predecessors.

Read the entire article here.

Poland: New Memorial with Old Gravestones Erected at Radom Jewish Cemetery

Radom, Poland. New Memorial at Jewish Cemetery. Photos courtesy of FODZ.

Poland: New Memorial with Old Gravestones Erected at Radom Jewish Cemetery

(ISJM) The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland has announced the upcoming dedication of a new memorial monument at the Jewish cemetery at the central Polish town of Radom. The monument, erected on the cemetery is a raised lapidarium incorporating many of the gravestones scattered on the site and found in other locations. The ceremonial unveiling is planned for November 8, 2010.

The memorial is being built within the framework of the "Tikkun - Repair" project, created by the Polish and Israeli Prison Service with the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland as a partner.

The monument continues a tradition of "gathering of stones" begun with the erection of cemetery memorials by survivors immediately after the Shoah, and then continued in the 1980s and 1990s at places such as Kazimierz Dolny and Wyszków.

USA: Allison Hoffman on Moshe Safdie and the Institute of Peace on the Washington Mall

USA: Allison Hoffman on Moshe Safdie and the Institute of Peace on the Washington Mall

Allison Hoffman has written a fine article about the Israel-born and Canada-raised architect Moshe Safdie, his new project on the mall in Washington, and the difficulties of architecture in Israel today. I'm quoted, though I am no Safdie expert. Safdie is known for many dramatic (and some now iconic) exterior sculptural building forms. He certainly does have a talent for creative shaping of built form. However, as the new United States Institute of Peace seems (I have not seen it yet) to demonstrate, his other skills are about responding to context - when he must do so - and turning his eye inward.

Master Builder

With his U.S. Institute for Peace set to open in Washington, Israeli-born Moshe Safdie takes his place among the world’s leading architects

By Allison Hoffman

When tourists visit Israel, they are, more often than not, following an itinerary designed by the architect Moshe Safdie. From the grand sloping entrance hall at Ben Gurion airport—lined in golden limestone—to the sweeping vistas at Yad Vashem or the tony shops and cafes in the new Mamilla mall just outside the Old City of Jerusalem, Safdie has been singularly responsible for shaping his native country’s modern landmarks. In Canada, where he lived as a teenager, Safdie is famous as the designer of Habitat, a beehive-like housing complex in Montreal that landed him on the cover of Newsweek in 1971—and, with his shock of white hair and bushy mustache, remains so easily recognizable that customs officers sometimes greet him by name. But in the United States, where Safdie has made his home and career for the past three decades, he remains almost unknown, overshadowed by superstars like Frank Gehry, Daniel Libeskind, and Richard Meier.

Now, though, Safdie is going where his competitors have not: the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where construction is nearly complete on the $186 million headquarters Safdie designed for the United States Institute of Peace. The building, which is next door to the State Department, anchors the far western end of Constitution Avenue opposite the Lincoln Memorial—an unusually prominent site, carved out of a former Navy parking lot, that finally gives Safdie a unique opportunity to leave his mark at the symbolic center of his adopted country. “I have three passports and three citizenships, and feel very much part of all three places,” Safdie said. “But it’s evolved so that the architect of the peace institute is an Israeli. That tickles me nicely.”

Read the entire article here.