The New Spertus Institute goes beyond the tragedies of Jewish history to let in light and radiate a welcoming presence as a place of learning

The new Spertus may be a gift and an invitation, but that's not to say it isn't a challenge as well. Its museum (which forms a third of the Institute, along with Spertus College and the Asher Library) is designed to put visitors through physical and intellectual changes of perspective.

Consider the core collection display, an enormous semi-circular glass display case containing objects from the museum's holdings.

"What we wanted was for the objects to float in space around you," says museum director Rhoda Rosen. "We didn't exactly get that but... we got the next best thing, which is an embrace. You walk into [the crescent shape defined by the case] and you feel contained and embraced by Jewish culture and history." But at the same time "it's a 16-foot, floor-to-ceiling glass wall, so it's quite humbling to be within it."

The display rejects the notion of a single, authoritative historical or cultural narrative-a Jewish monostory. Objects are meant to be seen in multiple contexts, or in ways that subvert expectation. Photos from the Holocaust, for instance, are placed face down on their shelves to shake us free of rote ways of viewing that cataclysm.

"All of our exhibitions," says Rosen, "offer a series of invitations for you, the viewer, to engage with them. It's about art as being radically transformative and it's about hard work. You don't come to be entertained in this space."

The facade looks like Kristallnacht in reverse. As if shards from the windows broken during that notorious 1938 Nazi pogrom had somehow reassembled themselves on south Michigan Avenue, into a single, sharp-edged, multifaceted surface. Of course, that's not an image the people at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies had in mind when they hired the Chicago firm of Krueck & Sexton to design their new building. As Ron Krueck notes, his client's instructions were about anything but fear or persecution. Just the opposite, in fact. for all that the national mood after 9/11 encouraged hunkering down, the new Spertus was meant to be a gift and an invitation; its facade, a way to let in light and radiate welcome. So in a sense it comes to the same thing, after all: Kristallnacht in reverse. Kristallnacht transcended.

Here's some of what Krueck had to say.

i4: What did the people at Spertus tell you they wanted?

Krueck: There was a very specific program: so many square feet for exhibition space, so many square feet for the library. But I think in a much more important sense, there was the idea that they wanted a building that was open, transparent, and welcoming. Saying, Come learn with us. On a very simple basis, that's what they asked for. When this building was commissioned, 9/11 was certainly on everybody's mind, and the fragility of a glass building. People were putting barriers in the street. Here was a Jewish institution with another insight—a feeling that, No, this isn't a fortress. We are going to open it. We're not going to close down.

i4: How did you arrive at that famous glass facade?

K: Some of the very early designs used stone as a way to contextualize the facade and relate it to the buildings adjacent to it. And [the client] kept saying, This doesn't feel right. And the building soon shed the stone. But there had been some early modulation of the facades in relationship to stone. Then when the building became one material-glass-these different plan moves needed to be unified. The surface needed to be unified. But it started shifting on us. It started shifting at angles.

i4: Interesting that you talk about it as if it were something the building did.

K: don't think that's by accident. We work in an evolutionary process so that the building begins to inform us, or have a dialogue with us. I don't mean that to be mystical. It's not mystical at all. It's a process that's truly evolutionary and self-informative and begins to establish criteria from which the design is determined-or the building determines itself.

i4: Did you consider what it might mean to design a Jewish building?

K: [At one point the design included a jutting cornice.] Howard Sulkin, the president of Spertus, said to us, "There's something not Jewish about this solution." It was the only time the word ever came up in relationship to the design of the building. We had a plane projecting out over the top surface and he said he'd thought about it a couple of days and realized that there's no end to learning--therefore there shouldn't be a cornice. People ask us, Is there a star of David hidden in the facade. Is there this, is there that? No. No. The answers are no. I don't think Spertus intended this to be a necessarily Jewish building. It's an educational building. It's about the idea of learning--that there's no limit, no end to it. It's an ongoing experience. i4