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How school children react to the tour through the exhibition Welcome to Jerusalem. A conversation with Marc Wrasse

Campaign for the exhibition Welcome to Jerusalem; Jewish Museum Berlin, designed by: Preuss und Preuss GmbH

You’ve worked for the Jewish Museum Berlin for many years, as well as for other museums. What makes this exhibition special?

The Jewish Museum Berlin has a wide variety of visitors—the audience here is nearly as diverse as the modern world itself. If you visit the museum or work here, you can have a lot of different experiences, including in experimental exhibitions such as Obedience (more information about the exhibition on our website). Due to their social and political significance, I always find encounters during tours through Welcome to Jerusalem (more on our website) to be something special. Muslim students in particular—and that label encompasses much variety, ranging from the third-generation Turkish people in Germany to Syrian war refugees with their anti-Israeli background—are highly attentive in this exhibition.

Why is that, in your opinion?

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A tour for the blind and vision impaired through the exhibition Welcome to Jerusalem at the Jewish Museum Berlin

This tactile model gives an overview of all rooms of the exhibition and explains the way through the exhibition. This tactile model was created by Jonas Hauer like the other models shown in this blog post; Jewish Museum Berlin, photo: Birgit Maurer-Porat

A “museum for everyone,” that is, accessible—that’s what we want to be and to become. The path to this goal is long and sometimes difficult, and it’s not always easy to determine the right direction. New approaches have to be developed, tested, and sometimes rejected. In addition, a wide variety of factors can make access difficult or even impossible for an individual. Sometimes language represents a barrier, sometimes architecture, sometimes the way things are presented, sometimes the topic or perspective, just to name a few.

This makes feedback from our visitors all the more important to us. Their criticism helps us to improve our existing offerings and to make them more accessible. Their praise motivates us to continue on the right path, even against the resistance that we sometimes unfortunately encounter. For this reason, among others, we were very pleased to receive permission to republish the following piece by Gerald Pirner, who was able to open new perspectives for many onto the exhibition Welcome to Jerusalem…

After the entry checkpoint comes the light well. It’s not just the seeing who experience light: an expanse opens acoustically, as if you were stepping out into the open, and yet remained in a closed space. → continue reading

Comments from Visitors to our Jerusalem Exhibition

Visitors can leave a comment, greeting, or anything else that fits on a post card on a wall titled “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of the exhibition; Jewish Museum Berlin.

I’m standing in the hallway at the end of the current exhibition Welcome to Jerusalem (learn more at our website), talking to visitors at random if they seem open to a brief conversation about the exhibition.

Was today your first visit to Jerusalem?

Elke (around 50 years old) from Berlin was in Jerusalem in 2000, and some of the things in the exhibition resonated for her. Norbert (69) from Bremen had never been there, but the exhibition made him want to see “this tremendous mish-mash of religions and peoples.”

To Marianna and Marta from Italy, who were just “in the city” for the first time, Jerusalem seemed above all else old, international, and rich in history. Lorenza (54) also from Italy, thought the video installations in the exhibition were particularly interesting because they show modern Jerusalem, which is nonetheless full of tradition. None of the three would wager a real trip to Jerusalem right now because of the political situation.

The Israelis Malka (58) and Shani (27) live near Tel Aviv but are very familiar with Jerusalem. Jonny (27) and Nora (24) even got married there.

Does the exhibition reflect the image of Jerusalem as you know it?

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