MUSEUM

Jewish Museum

"Welcome to the Jewish Museum, the preeminent museum in the United States devoted to art and Jewish culture. Whether you visit our home in the elegant Warburg mansion on New York City’s Museum Mile, or you explore our offerings online, you will always find something engaging. Through our temporary exhibitions, public programs and our unique collection, which now comprises nearly 30,000 objects ranging from archaeological artifacts to works by today’s most intriguing artists, visitors can journey through time and across continents."

"The Jewish Museum is dedicated to the enjoyment, understanding, and preservation of the artistic and cultural heritage of the Jewish people through its unparalleled collections, distinguished exhibitions, and related education programs. Using art and artifacts that embody the diversity of the Jewish experience from ancient to present times, throughout the world, the Museum strives to be a source of inspiration and shared human values for people of all religious and cultural backgrounds while serving as a special touchstone of identity for Jewish people. As a vital cultural resource for New York residents and visitors of all ages, the Museum also reaches out to national and international communities as it interprets and preserves art and Jewish culture for current and future generations."

The Jewish Museum, one of the world’s preeminent institutions devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture, from ancient to contemporary, was founded in 1904 in the library of The Jewish Theological Seminary, where it was housed for more than four decades. The Jewish Museum was the first institution of its kind in the United States and is the oldest existing Jewish museum in the world.

Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated the first gift of 26 objects of fine and ceremonial art to the library of The Jewish Theological Seminary with the suggestion that a Jewish museum be formed. Subsequent gifts and purchases have helped to form the Museum’s distinguished permanent collection, one of the largest and most important of its kind in the world.

In 1944, Frieda Schiff Warburg, widow of the prominent businessman and philanthropist Felix Warburg, who had been a Seminary trustee, donated the family mansion at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street to the Seminary for use as a museum. Located along New York City's Museum Mile, and designed in the French Gothic chateau-style by architect Charles P.H. Gilbert, the original building was completed in 1908, and has been the home of the Museum since 1947.

A sculpture court was installed alongside the Mansion in 1959, and the Albert A. List Building was added in 1963 to provide additional exhibition and program space. In 1990, a major expansion and renovation project was undertaken; upon completion in June 1993, the expansion doubled the Museum’s gallery space, created new space for educational programs, provided significant improvements in public amenities, and added a two-floor permanent collection exhibition called Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey, which tells the unfolding story of Jewish culture and identity through 800 works of art.

Today, the Jewish Museum presents a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed temporary exhibitions while maintaining a collection of nearly 30,000 objects reflecting global Jewish identity – paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, ethnographic material, archaeological artifacts, numismatics, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media.