Dallas Holocaust Museum Sets Grand Opening Date
An “overwhelming demand” by educators across North Texas to teach students about the Holocaust has resulted in good news for museum-goers – the new Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum will open a state-of-the-art museum in downtown this September.
The 40-years-in-the-making museum is 55,000 square feet and cost $78 million, per officials.
Set for a grand opening on Sept. 18, the museum officials have announced an expected 200,000 visitors in its first year in downtown Dallas – half of whom will be students.
“After decades of steady growth and recognizing a serious lack of educational resources in the community, the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is designed to meet the challenge of educating the next generation in a more expansive facility that will accommodate more visitors and students than ever before, and feature a new name and expanded mission,” read a release from museum officials. “The Ten Stages of Genocide Gallery in the museum’s Human Rights Wing will include important profiles of the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides – both of which went unaddressed until it was too late. We want visitors to explore and understand their own unconscious bias and the bias that negatively impacts our society.”
Included in the museum is the new “Dimensions in Testimony” theater, using holographic imagery to allow visitors to interact in real-time with a digital rendering of a real genocide survivor, even after the survivor has passed away. There are also classrooms, a temperature-controlled library and archives, a reflection and memorial area, and a museum store.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony and an open house are set for Sept. 17.
