Polish Jewish Museum Delays Opening of Main Exhibit Amid $2.5M Budget Gap

Where?s the Money? The much-acclaimed Jewish history museum in Poland has delayed opening its main exhibit till next year ? and even that may be optimistic. Image by getty images
The Museum of the History of Polish Jews has gone over budget and the official opening of its permanent core exhibition has been pushed back.
The official opening has been delayed until Fall 2014, the museum’s Virtual Shtetl web portal reported Tuesday. The museum is seeking an extra $2.5 million – half from the state and half from the city of Warsaw, according to Virtual Shtetl.
Museum Acting Director Andrej Cudak spelled out the financial shortfall Sept. 25 at a meeting of the Culture and Media Commission of the Sejm, or Polish Parliament.
The museum is a public-private institution whose construction was largely financed by the state and the city. It opened its building in April, but without the core exhibition.
It currently hosts cultural and educational programs as well as temporary exhibits.
Cudak said in a statement posted on the Sejm web site that the museum’s core exhibit will be ready by June 2014 but its opening would still require “considerable mobilization of forces and resources.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
