WASHINGTON: The US Holocaust Museum will commemorate its 10th anniversary next year with a worldwide campaign to raise awareness of its mission and its message. Susan Davis International, teamed with local public affairs shop Powell Tate, walked away with a $250,000 contract last week to carry out the effort.
The ambitious campaign will seek to do much more than simply increase attendance. The museum hopes to spread its message of tolerance, remembrance, and resistance to people throughout the world, "especially those who will never visit the Museum itself."
"The Museum seeks not only to mark past accomplishments, but also to look ahead to ensure that new generations learn and embrace the lessons of the Holocaust - lessons about moral responsibility and the fragility of democracy," read the RFP. "In the aftermath of September 11 and with anti-Semitism on the rise in the very lands of the Holocaust, the Museum's mission has never been more critical, its lessons never more urgent."
A wide array of programs, events, fundraisers, and new exhibitions are already planned from April to December 2003. Among those are the annual Day of Remembrance commemoration in the Capitol rotunda and a gathering of Holocaust survivors in August.
Susan Davis won the contract following a notably brief bid process. Some DC firms that received the RFP on October 21 and expressed interest declined to respond at all, as submissions were due the morning of the 23rd. In-person pitches were given the last week of October, and the decision was announced by e-mail November 1.
Other programs scheduled for 2003 include a symposium on children and the Holocaust, an exhibition examining children who went into hiding during the war, a variety of special anniversary publications, and the launch of a 10th anniversary website.
