The Jewish Museum to Debut Newly Transformed Collection Galleries and Learning Center on October 24, 2025

New York, NY, May 19, 2025—The Jewish Museum announced today it will debut its renewed and reimagined collection galleries and learning center on October 24, 2025. Marking the most significant architectural upgrade to the Jewish Museum in over 30 years, the $14.5-million project transforms half of the public space within the Museum’s historic Warburg Mansion and centers cultural exchange, teaching, and learning as defining elements of the visitor experience. Central to this transformation is the integration of a new approach to teaching and learning in gallery settings and the debut of a new collection installation and narrative, tracing themes that have defined Jewish experience across time and place and highlighting histories resonant with those of other cultures.

The architectural design of the project was led by UNS (United Network Studio), Amsterdam, with Method Design, New York, in collaboration with New Affiliates Architecture as exhibition designers.

Featuring more than 200 works, Identity, Culture, and Community: Stories from the Collections of the Jewish Museum unfolds across the Museum’s third floor in a thematic and chronologically integrated presentation of its unparalleled holdings. The installation plan will support the display of art and objects of vastly varying scale and materiality, including delicate archaeological artifacts and Jewish ceremonial works, and a new naturally lit double-height gallery will enable the display of large-scale contemporary painting and sculpture as an integral part of the story. The Museum’s fourth floor features the new Robert and Tracey Pruzan Center for Learning, where art and objects will be on display in gallery settings, adjacent to facilities for educational programming and hands-on artmaking.  These two floors will be joined visually by a dramatic, monumentally scaled installation of more than 120 Hanukkah lamps from around the world and from antiquity to today, underscoring the central meaning of light as a symbol of enlightenment and hope across cultures. 

“This milestone moment heralds a new chapter for the Jewish Museum. The Museum’s collections and programming have always been distinguished by their unique focus on the myriad manifestations of Jewish culture through the lens of art, offering powerful examples of cultural and artistic exchange. With this reimagining of our collection and education galleries, we hope visitors will discover new points of connection and deepen their appreciation of the traditions that have shaped the Jewish experience throughout the global diaspora and in resonance with other cultures,” said James S. Snyder, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director. 

In conjunction with the reopening of its collection and education galleries this fall, the Museum will debut two special exhibitions that further its mission to illuminate aspects of the Jewish experience through art: Anish Kapoor: Early Work, also opening in October, will spotlight a period of remarkable invention for this internationally acknowledged artist, who descends from Hindu and Jewish Indian families; and, in December, Joan Semmel: Intimacies, co-curated with this iconic figure of the modern feminist movement, will place her work in dialogue with selections from across the Museum’s collections. 

About Identity, Culture, and Community: Stories from the Collections of the Jewish Museum

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. 

“Identity, Culture, and Community: Stories from the Collections of the Jewish Museum foregrounds the extraordinary vision, diversity, and experimentation of the artists it showcases, revealing a proliferation of artistic voices and influences, cross-cultural exchanges, and powerful narratives,” said Darsie Alexander, Senior Deputy Director and Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator. “Each work asserts a distinct history, conveying stories of the people who made, owned, and often saved these cherished objects. The Jewish Museum is the beneficiary of these great legacies, ensuring they are studied and preserved for generations to come.”

The Museum’s third floor will also feature a rotation of focused gallery installations that complement the central collection display, beginning with an exhibition exploring themes of Jewish life in Colonial America, presented in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; and an installation dedicated to the work of curator Pearl Bowser (1931–2023), who played a major role in advancing cutting-edge movies through the series The Black Film, in 1970, highlighting the Jewish Museum’s long history in introducing new ideas and artists to New York audiences. Future installations in these galleries will rotate regularly to explore specific stories of people, objects, and places that amplify the Jewish cultural narrative and that connect to the moment.

Identity, Culture, and Community: Stories from the Collections of the Jewish Museum is curated by Darsie Alexander, Senior Deputy Director and Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator; Claudia Nahson, Morris and Eva Feld Senior Curator; Kristina Parsons, Leon Levy Assistant Curator; and Rebecca Frank, Curatorial Assistant. 

About the Robert and Tracey Pruzan Center for Learning

The Jewish Museum’s transformed fourth floor features the Robert and Tracey Pruzan 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.

“The new Pruzan Center for Learning provides visitors of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities with unique opportunities to engage directly with and learn from original works of art from the Museum’s collections,” said Nelly Silagy Benedek, Deputy Director, Education and Programs. “These spaces also offer a less formal setting for visitors to gather, relax, and engage in participatory moments, underscoring ways in which art and objects convey cultural histories across time and place in settings that are intimate and that can build community.”

A central feature of the Pruzan 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, designed by Koko Architecture + Design, 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).

Programming to accompany the reinstalled collection galleries and the newly opened Center for Learning, scheduled to begin in November 2025, will be announced in the months ahead.

Funding
Work on the comprehensive renewal of the Museum’s third and fourth floor galleries began in the spring of 2024. The $14.5-million project is supported by a campaign initiative among the Jewish Museum’s Board to raise $30 million on the occasion of the Museum’s 120th Anniversary in 2024. That campaign has exceeded its goal and is now ongoing.