Identity, Culture, and Community: Stories from the Collection of the Jewish Museum and the Pruzan Family Center for Learning

The Jewish Museum’s renovated collection galleries will trace the rich history of migration, assimilation, and endurance that is the trademark of Jewish culture across the global diaspora through a new and expansive installation. Also punctuated by a series of rotating focus exhibitions, Identity, Culture, and Community will provide a thematic structure to reflect the diversity of Jewish experience through artworks and decorative objects, ranging from Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi ritual objects that are steeped in tradition, to large-scale painting and sculpture by boundary-pushing modern and contemporary artists, among them Mel Bochner, Nicole Eisenman, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Michal Rovner, Miriam Schapiro, and many others.

Organized in a loose chronology, this thematic installation begins with a display underscoring the historic importance of Torah and Jewish ritual as unifying symbols for Jewish communities. As visitors navigate the galleries, they will experience works that reflect the migration of the Jewish people through the changing political, social, and cultural landscape of the global diaspora from antiquity through the 20th and 21st Centuries. Subsequent chapters explore such themes as how art can serve as a repository of memory and an expression of identity in the face of forced migration and persecution; the visual vocabularies that emerged in post-World War II art and design; the role of women in Jewish culture and the impact of feminism on artistic output; and how Jewish identity and experience are being interpreted in contemporary art.

The Jewish Museum’s transformed fourth floor features the Pruzan Family Center for Learning, a 7,000-square-foot space dedicated to learning and engagement with light-filled, accessible galleries that significantly enhance the Museum’s ability to serve its diverse audiences. The new space incorporates both exhibition galleries, displaying over 200 works of fine art, ceremonial objects, artifacts, and decorative art from the Museum’s collections, as well as facilities for education and artmaking to serve the nearly 40,000 students and adults who enjoy education programs in the Museum each year.

A central feature of the Pruzan Family Center for Learning is a floor-to-ceiling display of more than 120 Hanukkah lamps which overlooks the Museum’s renewed collection galleries below and creates a visual and symbolic link between the galleries devoted to telling stories and those engaged with teaching and learning. Drawn from the Museum’s world-renowned holdings of more than 1,000 lamps from diverse cultures, periods, and places, the installation powerfully represents the diasporic nature of the Jewish experience. Other key installations include a gallery devoted to portrait and landscape painting, which invites visitors to consider how artists represent people and places to express concepts of identity, migration, acculturation, and assimilation. An objects gallery featuring ancient artifacts, ceremonial objects, and modern sculptural works completes the narrative arc of the Museum’s holdings by documenting the timeline of Jewish cultural creative-making from thousands of years ago to today.

Hands-on activities in the Center will include a one-of-a-kind simulated archaeological dig for children, a touch wall exploring materials transformed by artists to create works of art, and two new art studios offering artmaking opportunities for participants of all ages. Finally, the floor features a new salon space, designed to support educational and social programming of all kinds and featuring a rotation of newly commissioned site-specific works, beginning with a mural by Brooklyn-based artist Talia Levitt (b. 1989).