A smalll paragraph in the Arts Section of the Monday Times indicated that Frank Gehry had resigned from the task of designing the new Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, an adjunct to the existing one in Los Angeles built and operated by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The location of the site in Israel has sparked controversy from the beginning with Arabs claiming that it is on the remains of the thousand year old (mostly paved over) Mamila Cemetery and Jewish groups complaining that its intent is limited to bigotry between Jewish sects as opposed to Jewish/Arab/Christian discrimination. The Israeli Court has ruled that the project can go forward but apparently the Wiesenthal Center had tried to reduce the estimated cost of the Gehry building, originally targeted at 250 milllion dollars, resulting in the master’s resignation from the plan.
Until now, I have been a contributor to the Weisenthal Center despite my reservations about the museum in L.A., mainly out of a sense of reverence for the eponymous Nazi hunter and his lifelong mission. When I sent in my yearly donation last month, I had no idea that the Center had hired possibly the most expensive architect in America to design its Israeli structure, as opposed to selecting someone whose fee would be more appropriate to a charitable organization than a Fortune 500 company. The tag line for the Wiesenthal Center is “Dedicated to repairing the world one step at a time;” though I thought they meant this metaphorically, the scope of their initial budget suggests that they may have had actual bricks and mortar in mind.
Spurred by my revulsion at this inflated museum plan, I discovered that four members of the Hier family are on the payroll of the Center: Rabbi Marvin as Director earns $450,000/yr in salary and benefits; his wife Marlene as Membership director earns over $300,000/yr; son Avi as supervisor of the Israeli project earns $152,000/yr and son Ari, as director of the Jewish Studies Institute at the Center earns close to $100,000/yr. These figures are several years old so it is probable that the Hiers’ salaries have risen higher as of 2010. But even if the Hiers are doing respectable jobs, I am turned off by a mom and pop shop leading a charitable organization to the tune of over a million dollars a year in salaries. I am turned off by the decision of a Center devoted to education and holocaust remembrance to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a structure rather than on programming and outreach.
Ironically, Simon Wiesenthal, who died in 2005, was himself an architectural engineer. I can’t help thinking that a contest for young Israeli architects to design the new Museum would have served several purposes. It would have fostered young talent at a nominal expense while giving a nod to the memory of the man whose name inspired the Center. More importantly, it would have reminded the trustees of the Center that its now obscured bedrock purpose was to educate the public about the holocaust and the consequences of bigotry, not to compete with the Guggenheim at Bilbao.
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