Photographer Page

Pierre Adenis

Daniel Libeskind created the 2001 addition to the 1933 Jewish Museum in Berlin, spatially reckoning with the Holocaust and its legacy of absence, loss, and invisibility via empty rooms, dead ends, and dim lighting.

Daniel Libeskind's 2001 extension to the original Jewish Museum from 1933 aims to recall and integrate the repercussions of the Holocaust. The new museum doesn’t have its own entrance, but instead requires visitors to enter through an underground corridor from the old structure. Through his design, Libeskind wanted to evoke feelings of absence, invisibility, and emptiness that played a dominant part in the life of Jews. It’s easy to get lost inside the structure: there are dead ends and empty spaces everywhere, illuminated only by slivers of light that seep in from the outside. According to the architect’s website, the symbolic structure was built to understand the history of Berlin (incomplete without the contribution of its Jewish citizens), to merge the meaning of the Holocaust with the city’s consciousness and memory, and for Germany to acknowledge the erasure of Jewish life in its history.

Arguably the world's most famous work of art, the ”Mona Lisa” is now displayed behind thick plexiglass and a wooden barrier to protect it from the 15,000 visitors who flock to the Louvre each day.