In 2018, when an outdated home in Prague was torn down, a stash of virtually 700 artworks by Gertrud Kauders tumbled out of its partitions and ceiling, greater than 70 years after she had died in an extermination camp. A number of of these work are actually on show on the Jewish Museum in New York Metropolis, the place renewed galleries provide contemporary narratives of the Jewish diaspora.
Positioned within the historic Felix M. Warburg Home on Manhattan’s Higher East Facet, the museum reopened its third and fourth flooring on 24 October after a yearlong renovation. With a mixed space of 20,000 sq. ft—half the constructing’s public house—the redesign was led by United Community Studio in Amsterdam and New Associates Structure in New York. The $14m undertaking is a major milestone for James Snyder, the director of the Jewish Museum since 2023. In earlier roles, he oversaw renewals on a bigger scale: a $60m growth of New York’s Museum of Trendy Artwork in 1984, and a $100m revamp of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2010.
Galleries on the third flooring, final up to date by Tsao & McKown in 2018, undertake a breezier, extra interconnected format to show gadgets from the museum’s assortment. Curated by theme, the rooms current centuries-old artefacts alongside Summary Expressionist work by Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, in addition to items from dwelling artists that embrace queer and multicultural voices. Within the feminist work What We Convey (2023) by Andi Arnovitz, hundreds of laser-cut names of Jewish girls—from Natalie Portman to Ruth Bader Ginsburg—pour forth from the artist’s marriage ceremony costume.
The fourth flooring, beforehand closed to the general public, is anchored by the Robert and Tracey Pruzan Heart for Studying, which contains two artwork studios, an interactive tactile wall and a simulated archaeological dig for kids. The centre, which celebrates its opening on 16 November, is called after its lead donors—an funding banker who co-founded Centerview Companions and a author who was a longtime inside designer at Cullman & Kravis and a way of life guide on the HBO sequence Succession.
The brand new show of 139 menorahs on the fourth flooring of the Jewish Museum Kris Graves/Jewish Museum
Additionally on the fourth flooring are the Wilf Household Salon—an occasion house that includes a faux-woven mural by the Brooklyn-based artist Talia Levitt—extra galleries and a placing present of 139 Hanukkah lamps, housed in a 50ft vitrine that overlooks a double-height gallery beneath. Drawn from the museum’s assortment of greater than 1,000 items, the nine-branched menorahs are organized geographically and replicate various cultures and tales of hope by means of the ages. There are lamps made from silver or stone, impressed by Roman tombs or Islamic artwork, influenced by Rococo or Artwork Deco, assembled with candlesticks, deconstructed violins or plastic Statues of Liberty.
Some are testaments to creativity born of constraint. One is a chunk of trench artwork crafted from bullet casings and an artillery shell by American troopers in the course of the Korean Battle. One other is a hefty picket creation hewn by a Turkish 15-year-old at a post-war orphanage in France. There’s additionally lighter fare—just like the Menurkey, a turkey-shaped menorah that marked the convergence of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving in 2013.
Based in 1904 by the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Jewish Museum moved in 1947 to the Warburg Home, a Gilded Age mansion constructed within the French Gothic fashion on Fifth Avenue dealing with Central Park. A $36m renovation in 1993 added a seven-story annex, designed by Kevin Roche, that matched the fashion of the unique structure. In 2024, the chef David Teyf launched the second location of his cafe Lox, taking on the basement house vacated by Russ & Daughters, which is wrapped by a Maira Kalman illustrated mural.
