Everything forgotten
The exhibition Everything forgotten at the Jewish Museum Hohenems explores the various layers of meaning associated with forgetting. It offers a cultural-historical perspective, addressing individual, cultural, and societal tensions between the past and the present.
In Judaism, remembering biblical events plays a central role in almost all of the holidays and religious rituals. At the same time, however, there is also a call to forget.
In Hebrew, the words lishkoach—to forget—and koach, which means both power and strength, rhyme. This reflects the dual nature of forgetting.
Museums have a duty to preserve and remember. But how do (Jewish) museums deal with forgetting? What is collected, and what is discarded? What is exhibited, and what is not even inventoried?
After 1945, many Austrians wanted to forget what had happened in the past and their own involvement in it. This “culture of forgetting” was not questioned until the Waldheim affair in 1986. It was only then, that Austria began to research its role in National Socialism and the remembrance of the victims. The demand for accountability made many stories resurface in motion and rescued them from oblivion. Today, however, we are witnessing the rise of a new movement that seeks to leave history behind and creates a competition between the different cultures of remembrance and compares experiences of violence rather than engaging with them.
Therefore, it is important to discuss the mechanisms of forgetting and to ask what is repressed and overwritten, what is overlooked, and what is deliberately erased? The exhibition invites visitors to understand forgetting as part of a complex engagement with history and the present.
What do we forget? What must we not forget? And what might we need to forget? How much forgetting is contained within every act of remembering?
Participating artists
Arnold Dreyblatt, Dani Gal, Brigitte Kowanz, Maya Schweizer, Sigrid Sigurdsson, William Utermohlen, Gali Yudilevich, Patrick Zachmann
Everything forgotten
November 15, 2026 – October 3, 2027
Jüdisches Museum Hohenems
An exhibition by the Jewish Museum Hohenems in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Vienna