Divine intervention: Ralph Appelbaum's compelling exhibition design for the recently opened Museum of World Religions in Taipei offers a highly programmatic account of "universal" spiritual values - Issues & Commentary - Critical Essay

Art in America, Oct, 2002 by Eleanor Heartney

Questions about the place of religion in society have acquired new urgency in the wake of Sept. 11. The time seems ripe for an open and spirited debate about what religion can and cannot be expected to accomplish in a liberal society. Is religion, as conservative politicians and religious leaders contend, a bulwark against the antisocial behavior prompted by too many material and social choices? Or do its more extreme manifestations, as other observers have suggested, pose a threat to our civil liberties and our belief in individual self-determination? Is religion a force for tolerance or a breeding ground for intolerance? Does it offer solutions or compound the problems?

The new Museum of World Religions in Taipei, Taiwan would seem to be the ideal forum for a discussion of such issues. And in fact at the opening ceremonies, which took place Nov. 9, just two months after the attacks on the World Trade towers, Sept. 11 was frequently invoked as a wake-up call both by museum officials and by the world religious leaders who gathered for a concurrent conference on the preservation of sacred sites.

The Museum of World Religions is the product of the vision of Dharma Master Hsin Tao, a Chinese-born Buddhist master who is the founder of the Ling-Jiou Mountain Wu Sheng Monastery outside Taipei. In keeping with the long-standing Buddhist practice of establishing hospitals, schools and other institutions devoted to social welfare, in 1988 the Dharma Master persuaded his followers to support the founding of a museum that seeks to illuminate the world's religious traditions. Their fundraising efforts gathered $66 million, out of which handsome sum has come funding for the acquisition of objects for the collection, exhibition design and consultant fees.

However, despite its very good intentions, the museum seems peculiarly ill-equipped to deal with the difficult questions raised by recent events. Part of the problem lies in the contradictory nature of religion itself. But an equal hindrance here is a museo-logical philosophy whose definition of education is actually at odds with the museum's stated aims.

The museum is located on the upper two floors of a department store in a residential section of Taipei. The interior has been completely transformed into an otherworldly environment designed to engage viewers in contemplation of the diverse approaches to spirituality worldwide. In addition to good old-fashioned objects in vitrines, a dazzling variety of effects and technological tools fill its galleries and corridors, ranging from cascading water and manufactured mist to film, video, music and interactive digital touch screens.

The design concept for the museum was developed by an outside consultant, the American exhibition designer Ralph Appelbaum, with "content assistance" in the initial stages of the project from Lawrence Sullivan, director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at the Harvard Divinity School. The 66-member firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates (RAA) has been responsible for a staggering number of exhibition designs nationally and internationally. The firm's Web site lists its involvement in over 90 projects since 1978, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., The Newseum in Arlington, Va., the Rose Center fort Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Museum for African American History in Detroit. RAA has also created temporary exhibition designs, including the controversial multimedia installation for the Edward Hopper show at the Whitney Museum in 1995 and several exhibitions at the New York Public Library. Currently, the firm is at work on a permanent installation for the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center.

While each design is carefully tailored to suit the individual commission, there are common features that reveal the Appelbaum approach. As he told Deborah Solomon in an interview for the New York Times, his firm "produces projects that are tied to big stories." (1) The mark of an Appelbaum installation is its emphasis on narrative and spectacle. Typically, visitors are provided with a single prescribed path which takes them from a provocative initial experience through a variety of thematic episodes to a satisfying culmination that affirms the message the museum is committed to conveying.

Dramatic lighting and sound effects immerse visitors in a total experience filled with opportunities for interaction. At the Holocaust Memorial Museum, visitors are given an identity card of an actual Holocaust victim at the entrance. They must wait until they have traversed numerous exhibits, which include a death-camp-bound boxcar, piles of shoes and eyeglasses recovered from the camps, and a reinstallation of one of the wooden barracks from Birkenau, to discover whether the individual whose identification they hold will live or die. Appelbaum's installation for the Newseum, a museum celebrating the role of the press in a free society, culminates in a fully functioning TV studio where viewers can star in their own newscast that is then shown on closed-circuit television screens overhead. (The Newseum closed on Mar. 3 and will be moving to greatly expanded quarters on the mall in Washington, D.C. The new design will be created by RAA in collaboration with the architectural firm James Stewart Polshek & Partners. The two firms also worked together on the Rose Center for Earth and Space and the forthcoming William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock.)