Article by Cilly Kugelmann

At the Jewish Museum in Hohenems, Austria, an exhibition with the strange title “‘Taxidermied Jews?” History, present and future of Jewish museums”. “Taxidermied Jews?” The phrase refers to the ancient words of a president of the Jewish community in Vienna who did not want a museum in which Jews could be admired as “Taxidermied Indians”. In the context of the debate opened by the exhibition at the Hohenems Museum, Cilly Kugelmann, the former program director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, questions the very notion of a “Jewish museum.”