Jewish Museum Vienna website

The Jewish Museum Vienna (JMW) presents the exhibition “typical! Clichés about Jews and others” (running until October 11, 2009), which was developed jointly with the Jewish Museum Berlin. Visitors are confronted with different clichés and stereotypes from everyday life. It is an exhibition about seeing, perceiving, classifying and associating images and things pertaining to strangers and oneself. With the help of objects, pictures, photos, audio-visual objects and the like, opportunities are offered for overcoming prejudice-ridden classifications and attributes. As the title of the exhibition suggests, not only anti-Semitic prejudices are addressed. As anti-Semitism and philo-Semitism are only one aspect of racism – as Africa expert Walter Schicho stated – the exhibition draws analogies from other cultures. Stereotypes about native Americans, African Americans, Aborigines, etc. are also explored. The parallels are to sensitize the visitors to issues like stereotypes, the image of strangers and prejudices within a more global meaning. Particularly by including anti-Islamic stereotypes, the exhibition demonstrates that clichéd attitudes are a burning issue. This reveals once more to what extent we are entangled in prejudices, which have developed throughout history or are due to current political developments.