The Jewish Museum is an art museum and repository of cultural artifacts, open to the public until 1947.  It is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the former Felix M. Warburg House, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. This was the first Jewish museum in the United States, as well as the oldest extant Jewish museum in the world.  With its collection being over 30,000 objects, it makes this museum having the largest collection of art and Jewish culture excluding Israeli museums. The collection was established in 1904 at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

The first collection of this museum was a gift of Jewish ceremonial art objects from Judge Mayer Sulzberger to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America on January 20, 1904, where it was housed in the seminary’s library. The collection was moved in 1931, with the Seminary, to 122nd and Broadway. The Jewish Theological Seminary received over 400 Jewish ceremonial items and created, ‘The Museum of Jewish Ceremonial Objects’, previously the Jacob Schiff Library. The collection was subsequently expanded by major donations from Hadji Ephraim Benguiat and Harry G. Friedman. In 1939, in light of WWII, Poland sent about 350 objects to New York city from homes and synagogues in order to preserve them.

Following Felix Warburg’s death in 1937, in January 1944 his widow Frieda donated the family mansion to the seminary as a permanent home for the museum, and the site opened to the public as ‘The Jewish Museum’ in May 1947. Frieda Warburg said at the opening that the museum would not be a somber memorial, but rather a celebration of the Jewish faith and traditions. The first expansion of the museum was the addition of a sculpture garden in 1959 by Adam List. The building was expanded in 1963 and further by architect Kevin Roche in 1993.

In the 1960s, the museum took a more active role in the general world of contemporary art, with exhibitions such as Primary Structures, which helped to launch the Minimalist art movement. In the decades since, the museum has had a renewed focus on Jewish culture and Jewish artists. From 1990 through 1993, director Joan Rosenbaum led the project to renovate and expand the building and carry out the museum’s first major capital campaign, of $60 million. The project, designed by architect Kevin Roche, doubled the size of the museum, providing it with a seven-story addition. In 1992, the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center teamed up to create The New York Jewish Film Festival, which presents narrative features, short films and documentaries.

Today, the museum also provides educational programs for adults and families, organizing concerts, films, symposiums and lectures related to its exhibitions. Joan Rosenbaum was the museum’s director from 1981 until her retirement in 2010. In 2006, the museum broke with its longstanding policy of being closed for Sabbath observance by offering free of charge public admission on Saturdays.

In 2011 the museum named Claudia Gould as its new director. In 2012 Claudia Gould hired Jens Hoffmann Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs. In early December 2017, the Jewish Museum suspended Hoffmann from his position following allegations of sexual harassment leveled against him by multiple staff members. In the wake of that decision, the Honolulu Biennial cut its ties with Hoffmann, the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit suspended him from his role as chief curator at large (a position from which he resigned later that month) and the Kadist Art Foundation similarly suspended him from his position as curator and adviser. The 3rd People’s Biennial was supposed to take place at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art in 2019, with Hoffmann co-directing; however, the museum suspended its involvement with Hoffmann after the sexual harassment allegations at the Jewish Museum were not resolved. On December 17, 2017, the Jewish Museum terminated Hoffmann after a review of the allegations. Hoffmann denied “knowingly or purposefully [behaving] in a bullying, intimidating, harassing, or sexually inappropriate manner.”

In 2022, Yale University historian Michael Casper criticized the museum’s exhibition on Jonas Mekas for its lack of treatment of Mekas’s role in editing two pro-Nazi newspapers during World War II. Cultural historian Jeffrey Shandler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “It would be problematic anywhere, in any museum. But I think it is doubly so in a Jewish museum. It really raises questions about their understanding of their mission.”

The Russ & Daughters Cafe at the museum closed in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.  In November 2024, the restaurateur David Teyf opened a restaurant named Lox in the museum.

The content of this Views is a derivative version of the Wikipedia version at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Museum_%28Manhattan%29