Philadelphia's Independence Mall is getting a face lift, with a bit of a Jewish flair.
Serving as the region's central museum for Jewish history since its opening in 1976, the National Museum of American Jewish History is preparing to move into a brand-new, $100 million facility at 5th and Market streets by 2010.
And with its planned 20,000 square-foot core exhibition, state-of-the art auditorium and five-story glass facade, the new museum promises to redefine the Mall and open up new opportunities for academic scholarship, especially at the University
"Those of us involved are committed to creating a working, thriving relationship between the museum and Penn," said Josh Perelman, the museum's deputy director for programming and a post-doctoral fellow in Penn's Jewish Studies program.
"That means creating venues for scholarly engagement and for Penn students to do internships and to participate in the museum."
College freshman Jacob Bennett, who is involved in Hillel, said Penn's active Jewish community make the new museum a natural fit for the region, because of the immense "research in Jewish studies coming out of academia in this area."
Museum director and Penn alumna Gwen Goodman said the new facility will allow the museum to display all of its collections while also having room for "lectures, panel discussions, theatre and musical activities."
"We have one of the largest collections of Jewish Americana with over 10,000 objects, and, because we acquired it [the collection], we had to reconsider our exhibition design," she said.
But aside from creating more space for artifacts, the new location, Goodman says, will help reinforce the connection between "freedom and what this museum represents."
On "each floor, visitors are brought back to look out on the Independence mall," she said. "The location of this museum, across from Independence Hall and near the Constitution Center, really tells the story of what can happen when an ethnic group can live under the freedoms of our government."
Aesthetically, the museum's architecture will highlight this point as well.
Robert Young, associate partner at Polshek Partnership, the firm designing the building, pointed out that "the front part of the building is a sort of glass veil, which is supposed to serve as a mediator between the universal ideas of freedom on Independence Mall and the more specific experiences inside the museum," he said.
But the actual site poses some obstacles to the museum's builders, such as a busy SEPTA terminal next door and prominent surrounding buildings, Young said.
"The challenge is to fit in with the fabric [of the location] and, at the same time, make a statement."
And that statement, Goodman hopes, will reach people from all backgrounds.
"We want to inspire people to appreciate the diversity of the Jewish American background and the freedoms to which all Americans aspire," she said. "This is really a celebration."
