At the TRACE Project, we offer an educational platform to reveal hidden histories. Our goal is to incorporate technology, providing a dynamic interactive experience with students becoming essential witnesses to history.
ABOUT +
My name is Amalia Abecassis and I am excited to share my passion for educating others about the Holocaust through my work with The TRACE Project, a 501(c)(3) organization that is supported by the Provenance Research Department at the Louvre Museum in Paris, the Holocaust Museum of Los Angeles, and other organizations including the Jewish Digital Cultural Recovery Project funded by the European Union.
RESEARCH / CURRICULUM +
My curriculum “Art & Plunder Through the Lens of the Holocaust” explores the history of artwork looted during the Nazi Era, between 1933 and 1945. The goal is to understand how looting happened, what methods are used to document the history of ownership, and whether art, collections, collectors, and museums can help us teach the Holocaust.
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Before starting research, in order to analyze and record if students would be interested in this subject matter at my school, I conducted three focus groups.
ORIGINAL STORYBOARD & AUDIO CONTENT FOR A PLANNED IMMERSIVE LOOTED ART EXHIBIT
As we look around the world today, we see consistent problems with racism, religious intolerance, and an increasing political divide. This is even more relevant as witnesses of history and survivors are dying taking their memories and experiences with them. So an important question to ponder over is how the use of technology can be used to provide a personal narrative to teach history. Through the use of VR and immersive experiences, technology can change our behavior and understanding by making us a witness to history. In this planned immersive exhibit, the viewer becomes a Nazi looted painting whose truth is hidden in shame as it traverses continents from being a sentimental object hung on a Jewish family’s home, to being stored in a Nazi inventory, to being exhibited in a museum or art gallery. This type of technology will enable viewers to bridge emotion and memory together creating a space where they can unite and empathize together while carrying their experiences and learning with them.