Yazdani Studio Brings the Museum of Tolerance Los Angeles into the 21st Century With an Interactive Social Lab

2021 Best of Year winner for Small Museum/Gallery

MOT was founded in 1993 as the educational arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. A human rights laboratory and educational facility, the institution invites visitors to understand the Holocaust in both historic and contemporary contexts and confront all forms of prejudice and discrimination in the world today, bullying and hate crimes included. The Claudia and Nelson Peltz Social Lab, a new 10,000-square-foot gallery, brings the museum firmly into the 21st century though interactive methodologies, both high-tech and low. Visitors embark on a circuitous route through the project’s 15 distinct spaces, which examine bigotry and abuse on different scales—individual biases, local issues, national conflicts, global crises—presented in myriad forms. Mirrors scrutinize personal affronts; LED touch-screens outline tolerance and diversity (and their absence) from different eras in American history; translucent “veils” made of metal coils suspended from the ceiling divide exhibits while serving as backdrops for film projection. Design principal Mehrdad Yazdani and his team maximize the cross-pollination of themes between the lab and the rest of the museum with technology that not only addresses and illuminates past and current injustices but also will evolve and adapt content over time, all with the same overarching message: Act to effect change.

Yazdani Studio: mehrdad yazdani; michael smith; mimi lam; jessica yi; paul morel; glenn glinter.