Moving the consolidated formula – 4 million visitors in 11 years – of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles to Israel. This is the challenge undertaken by the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, but it is proving more difficult than expected. The fact is highlighted by the New York Times, which tells how, after the project was completed by Frank Gehry and construction work commenced last May in Jerusalem, there are still many detractors and people who do not believe the museum can (or should) become a reality. Critics include Michael Sorkin, who writes in the Architectural Record that the use of large irregular-shaped stone slabs “uncomfortably evokes the `deconstruction' of Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah into a pile of rubble by Israeli security forces”.

There are, of course, detractors in Israel too: the politician Meron Benvenisti, former vice-mayor of Jerusalem, has denounced the museum in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz, calling it “so hallucinatory, so irrelevant, so foreign, so megalomaniac”. Even moderate Israelis doubt that a museum conceived, financed and designed by the Americans can be a success. And, uniquely, the Palestinians agree. The timing? The structure ought to be ready no sooner than 2008, but the financing is slow: so far 85 million of the 200 needed has been collected from a dozen or so US and Canadian philanthropists. E.S.

https://www.museumoftolerance.com