HOUSTON – Holocaust Museum Houston is scheduled to reopen its doors in June, after more than doubling in size at its original location.
The $34 million expansion on Caroline Street will now be 57,000 square feet, making it the fourth largest Holocaust museum in the country, and the first to be bilingual in English and Spanish.
The new three-story museum will include a welcome center, four permanent galleries, two changing exhibition galleries, classrooms, research library, cafe, an indoor theater and an outdoor amphitheater.
The new name of the building would be Holocaust Museum Houston, Lester and Sue Smith Campus. The Smiths donated $15 million, the largest gift in the history of the museum.
Some of the features in the expanded museum:
- More than 50 multimedia screens throughout the museum
- Bearing Witnesses: A Community Remembers Holocaust Gallery with a Danish rescue boat and German World War II-era railcar
- The Rhona and Bruce Caress “And Still I Write” Young Diarists on War and Genocide Gallery features 18 young diarists, including Anne Frank
- Human Rights Gallery will feature educational displays of all UN-recognized genocides as well as tributes to international human rights leaders
- Moral Choices Hall and Jerold B. Katz Family Butterfly Loft features the three-story Butterfly Loft, with a kaleidoscope of 1,500 butterflies symbolizing the 1.5 million children who perished in the Holocaust
- Samuel Bak Gallery and Learning Center will debut the world's largest gallery of artwork by the Holocaust child survivor and painter Samuel Bak, with 130 works in exhibition rotation.
Until the expanded museum opens, the temporary museum will remain in the 9200 block of Kirby Drive.
Holocaust Museum Houston is dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, remembering the 6 million Jews and other innocent victims killed by Nazis during World War II and honoring the survivors’ legacy.