05. December 2022
Close up

“Was quite OK”

by Adina Seeger & Domagoj Akrap
© Ouriel Morgensztern
Visitor books are really something nice. They enable people to express their opinions anonymously and in an unobserved manner. Criticism, as well as praise, may be easier to express in this way – unfiltered feedback, in other words, which is very valuable to us.


:
:

More than a year and a half ago, the new permanent exhibition on the history of the first Jewish community in Vienna opened at Museum Judenplatz. The fifth visitor’s book is meanwhile available in the exhibition and contains many entries – we find names in various languages and scripts, small drawings as “artistic” memories, as well as wishes or complaints. We come across entries from all continents: besides many from the USA, Canada and Israel, there are also entries from the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Pakistan, South Korea and Colombia, to name just a few countries.

“I loved it so many buttons to press”


As curators of the exhibition, we are, of course, especially pleased that praise and positive feedback predominate in the entries. Who doesn’t like to read sentences like:

:


"BEST MUSEUM IN VIENNA!"


:


"A very good and cool exhibition "


:


“Whoever invented all this, I thank him with lots of kind regards"


Well, naturally, we didn’t completely invent it all. There were and are well-known researchers whose results we were able to build upon. The high information content of the exhibition, the many interactive stations, and the installation of augmented and virtual reality in the area of the synagogue excavation, which brings us closer to the densely built-up Jewish quarter, located back then on Judenplatz, and, above all, to the synagogue itself, were particularly lauded. The fact that we also thought of children when designing the exhibition is also positively emphasized:

:


“Very cool, cool tracing game!”


:


“I loved it so many buttons to press.”


“This museum is exciting for me but I don’t love to read so much


:
On the critical side, some find fault that the texts are not in Hebrew, since we are a Jewish museum and, after all, Hebrew is the language of the Jews. The exhibition is bilingual – German and English – like all our exhibitions, especially given that English is the most inclusive second language we can choose as a museum in the German-speaking world.

Some visitors complain that there is too much text in the exhibition. We basically agree: better too much than too little. Moreover, there is a text hierarchy that we introduced to take into account that many visitors come to the museum with little time: summaries of the content are provided for all of them at the beginning of each overview text.

:
© Ouriel Morgensztern
For us, the feedback on the large amount of text offers us an opportunity to look again at how we can make it clearer that there are different levels to going in-depth and that our visitors do not have to read everything to be able to take a lot from the exhibition along with them.


Museum Judenplatz instead of Schönbrunn


If one then learns from an entry that our museum was given preference over Schönbrunn (the world’s oldest zoo or even the palace?), we are all the happier. But visitors’ books indicate much more. They also capture a certain mood. Since March we have also found references to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine in the visitors’ book – mostly combined with calls for peace.
:

Several other entries draw our attention to ongoing antisemitism, which has experienced an upswing in recent years due to the pandemic. Last fall, a visitor wrote:


“But I’m very sorry that the soldiers have to stand in front of every Jewish monument

:

Visitors’ books also reveal observations like these, which repeatedly show us the abnormal state of the exasperating “normality” of Jewish life in Austria (and Europe).

Feel free to write a review yourself after the visit of our exhibition "Our Medieval City! The first Jewish Community in Vienna" at Museum Judenplatz. We are looking forward to it!