Susan L. Braunstein

Susan L. Braunstein is primarily responsible for the collections of historical and contemporary Judaica, antiquities and numismatics. She joined the staff in 1980 as a Research Associate after working at the Brooklyn Museum in the Department of Egyptian, Classical and Near Eastern Art. Dr. Braunstein has created numerous exhibitions for the Jewish Museum, including Israel in Antiquity: From David to Herod (1982); Jewish Life in Tsarist Russia: A World Rediscovered (1994); The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysteries of the Ancient World (2008); As it were, So to speak: a Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom (2013); and Repetition and Difference (2015). Her specialties include the archaeology of Israel and Hanukkah lamps; in 2004 she published a catalogue of the Museum’s entire collection of 1,022 Hanukkah lamps. Dr. Braunstein has a PhD in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University.​ Most recently, she was the coordinating curator for the museum’s newly installed collection display, Scenes from the Collection, which opened in January 2018.