Meet Rick and Laura Brown, who are on the art and architecture faculty at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and Thomas C. Hubka, Emeritus Professor of Architectural History from University of Wisconsin, to learn about this collaborative project with the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which recreates what was one of the most beautiful 18th century synagogue in Poland - the Gwoździec wooden synagogue. It is an exquisite expression in timber and paint of Poland’s historical diversity.
When compared to the drabness of daily life in 18th century Poland, the experience of entering an intensely colored interior of a painted synagogue must have been exhilarating. Artists and architectural historians recognized the unique value of these historic buildings and documented them during the late 19th and early 20th centuries before they were all destroyed by the Nazis in World War II.
