Curse of the Tolerance Museum (Cont'd)
Museum of Tolerance, Jerusalem. Photo: Shay Gil All museum construction projects come in over budget and late, but Jerusalem's ill-fated Museum of Tolerance takes the cake. An initiative of L.A.'s Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Jerusalem MOT was conceived as a sister institution to Pico Blvd.'s Museum of Tolerance. Announced by Rabbi Marvin Hier circa 2000, the Jerusalem museum has just opened its doors 25 years later. The original opening date was to have been 2005. What happened? Bilbao, for one thing. Turn-of-the century museum builders believed that an audacious starchitect building could draw affluent crowds to cities off the cultural tourism track. Hier commissioned Frank Gehry himself to design the building. Gehry produced an ambitious design that scandalized Israel's more conservative critics. Then sticker shock set in. The client asked for a radically scaled-down and cheaper building. Gehry, who didn't need the aggravation, quit the project in 2010. Wife-and...
