On more misunderstandings – Emily Tamkin in Haaretz:

‘Even she was surprised by the intensity of the pushback.
Barbara Staudinger was the unanimous choice to head the Jewish Museum Vienna, two modest-sized buildings a short walk from each other in the Austrian capital. She’s not Jewish, but she had the academic credentials and the professional experience: She once helmed the Jewish museum in Augsburg, Germany.
And she was brimming with ideas. For example, for her first temporary exhibition, she aimed to explore a concept she had been mulling for years: people’s misconceptions about Jews, including those that Jews might have about each other. So she launched an exhibition on 100 misunderstandings about – and among – Jews.
The sound and fury commenced. The musician at the opening ceremony in November, Yiddish-language singer Isabel Frey, was accused of being a supporter of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Frey had performed in Israel earlier that year; one product of the trip was a photo of her at a protest in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood against the eviction of Palestinians. This was a “political question,” Frey said, adding that people in the Jewish community insisted that such vilification was no way to treat an artist – or anyone.’

(…)
‘But she believes that antisemitism is better confronted “by kind of making people question things and opening up and breaking up the idea that everything has to be in a certain way.” Staudinger similarly believes that a museum cn be a discussion center for Jewish and non-Jewish visitors alike. That’s what the museum should do: unpack, challenge, provoke; a Jewish museum’s role isn’t to fight antisemitism alone.
And anyway, “antisemites don’t go to Jewish museums” – they surely don’t pay to go to them. (An adult ticket to both buildings of the Jewish Museum Vienna costs 15 euros.)
Staudinger pointed to arguably the most controversial item in the temporary exhibit, “Dancing Auschwitz,” a video installation of a survivor and his family dancing in front of the concentration camp.
To Staudinger, this raised important questions: Who determines how we commemorate? Who gets to dance at Auschwitz? Who determines the right or wrong way to remember?’

(…)

‘“You put yourself out there, you have to deal with it,” she said. “Not everyone has to love you.” But she still thinks that a museum should surprise. “If you just see what you expect, you don’t have to be there.” The Jewish Museum Vienna, meanwhile, should “tell Viennese history from a Jewish perspective” while representing the diversity of that history. It should look back and discuss topics relevant to today’s society. “And yes, that includes misconceptions and misunderstandings.” The two newest special exhibitions at the museum reflect its commitment to a wide-ranging approach. “Focus! Click! Maria Austria – Photographer in Exile,” which opened last month, takes a look at the life of Jewish photographer Maria Austria, whose last name at birth was actually Oestreicher – Austrian.
In the ’30s she moved from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia to Vienna to study photography, before heading to Amsterdam. There, she opened a photography studio; her most famous work was a series of photographs in 1954 of the so-called Secret Annex, where Anne Frank hid from the Nazis.’

Read the article here.

Antisemites should get discount in Jewish museums, 50 or 25 percent at least.

By the way, I don’t think that ‘Dancing Auschwitz’ was the most controversial item in the exhibition on Jewish identity. There were many more items that could rub salt in a wound, there is a surplus of wounds.

Here, you can read my article on this exhibition, only in Dutch.

And here you can watch Dancing Auschwitz.

The question Staudinger is asking: what’s a Jewish museum? Or maybe even: what’s a museum, and what is it for?