One only needs to look at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) logo, with its abstract outline of the CMHR building, to see the way in which the museum's architecture has come to stand for the CMHR's immaterial meanings and content. The CMHR's architecture becomes a material intersection of discourses of cosmopolitanism, human rights, and national identity, but as this article argues, the reliance on a dominant hope narrative reinscribes problematic generalizations that do not challenge visitors to think critically about these discourses. How does the CMHR architectural structure respond to and represent "difficult knowledge" associated with the contents of the museum? The author utilizes Deborah Britzman's pedagogical theories of difficult knowledge, along with discourses of cosmopolitanism, human rights, and transnational "iconic" architecture, to argue that the CMHR architecture, in itself, falls short of addressing feelings of ambivalence that are so difficult to explore and tolerate through its symbolic narratives of hope, enlightenment, and progress.