STUDY: RECESSION TAKES TOLL ON MUSEUM WORKERS

Washington, DC (July 15, 2010) ─Nearly 40 percent of nonprofit organizations - and 53 percent of museums - lack adequate staffing to deliver programs and services. According to a national survey released yesterday by the Nonprofit Listening Post Project at Johns Hopkins University, "Recession Pressures on Nonprofit Jobs," arts and culture organizations have been particularly hard hit by the nation's economic downturn. The American Association of Museums is a partner in the Listening Post Project. .

The survey results reflect findings from previous studies by both the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins and AAM. In a previous Listening Post survey, 34 percent of nonprofit organizations reported eliminating staff positions and 41 percent postponed filling new positions during the six months between September 2008 and March 2009.

In a January 2010 study from AAM entitled Service Despite Stress, more than two-thirds (67.1%) of museums reported at least moderate financial stress in 2009. For 8.4% of museums the stress level was severe (defined as "bad, but I have seen worse in the previous 5 years") and for 17.8% the financial stress was very severe (defined as "the very worst I have seen in at least 5 years"). At the same time, attendance increased at a majority of museums in 2009.

"This important study from the Johns Hopkins Listening Post Project confirms what we have heard anecdotally, from all types of museums and in every region of the country," said AAM president Ford W. Bell. "Namely, that America's museums are being asked to provide more services to a public hungry for them, including voids created by cuts in local governments' budgets, all without the adequate resources to do so."

Workforce reductions are only part of the story. Nonprofits have been forced to take additional actions that impact their own workers and reduce their ability to deliver critical programs and services. Among responding organizations, over the recent six-month period covered by the new survey:

• 49 percent "refined job descriptions," often a euphemism for increasing employee workloads and assigning the responsibilities of laid-off staff to remaining employees.

• 39 percent implemented a salary freeze.

• 36 percent postponed filling new positions.

• Other nonprofits in the survey increased staff hours (23 percent), cut or reduced benefits (23 percent), increased non-program work for program staff (12 percent), and reduced wages (12 percent).

Changes in employment varied significantly by field. Organizations in two of the six fields covered in the survey (elderly services and community and economic development) reported overall employment growth, the former by 0.6 percent and the latter by 5 percent. This was likely a result of continued economic recovery program spending. In contrast, nonprofit theaters reported job reductions of 6 percent. The remaining three fields that participate in the Listening Post Project also recorded reductions - museums (-1 percent), orchestras (-3 percent), and children and family service organizations (-0.7 percent).

"The pressures on nonprofits have accelerated and are clearly taking their toll," noted Lester Salamon, report author and director of the Center for Civil Society Studies. "Organizations have shown enormous resilience and commitment to their critical missions, but this has come at a price."

The full report "Recession Pressures on Nonprofit Jobs" is available online at http://ccss.jhu.edu.

Historic treasure of Jewish life and culture gifted to UC Berkeley

BERKELEY - One of the world's preeminent collections of Jewish life, culture and history will have a new home at the University of California, Berkeley, starting this fall, campus officials and the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley announced today (Monday, June 21).

The 10,000-piece collection of precious music, art, rare books and historical archives - part of the Magnes Museum since its founding in 1961 - will be transferred to UC Berkeley over the summer. The collaboration will partner a world-class collection with a world-class university, complementing the school's academic offerings, raising the profile of the Magnes collection, and making it more accessible to scholars.

The transfer is being made possible by gifts totaling $2.5 million over five years from philanthropists Warren Hellman, Tad Taube, and the Koret Foundation. These gifts will ensure that the acquisition is built on a solid and self-sustaining financial model.

Support from other Magnes Museum donors will finance the renovation of a building at 2121 Allston Way, in the heart of the city of Berkeley's arts and commerce district. The 25,000-square-foot space will have a lecture room, seminar rooms and a state-of-the art space to exhibit the Magnes' prints, paintings, photographs, costumes and Jewish ceremonial objects.

The new name of the Magnes Museum will be the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at The Bancroft Library.

The Magnes' Western Jewish History Archives, the world's largest collection of letters, diaries, photographs and other archival documents relating to the Jewish settlement of the West, will move into The Bancroft Library. Musical manuscripts and sheet music will be located at the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library.

"We are excited to acquire, steward and grow this precious cultural asset and ensure that it contributes to a much broader vision for our already robust Jewish studies programs at UC Berkeley," said UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert J. Birgeneau. "We thank Warren Hellman, the Taube Family, and the Koret Foundation, who have stepped forward to help make this vision possible. We also look to build on the foundation of support created in the last five decades by the many friends of the Magnes Museum who have given generously and made this collection the treasure that it is today."

The Magnes Collection - considered among the world's finest holdings of Jewish history and culture - features Hanukkah lamps, Torah ornaments, musical recordings, portraits, modern paintings and sculpture that date as far back as the 15th century. In some cases, long-separated papers of Jewish families will be reunited under one roof at The Bancroft Library.

"The Magnes has been a vital and vibrant part of the cultural life of the Bay Area for almost 50 years," said Charles Faulhaber, the James D. Hart Director of The Bancroft Library. "There is such a close fit between the Magnes' Western Jewish Archives and library collections and The Bancroft's collections on the history of California and the American West that it seems like a match made in heaven."

With the upcoming renovation of the Allston Way building, the core Magnes collections of Jewish art and ceremonial objects will be more available than ever to the public, Faulhaber added.

"I think that this is the best of both worlds - a new and revitalized Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life as an integral part of The Bancroft, and a prominent physical and programmatic presence at the heart of the Berkeley Arts District," he said. "What's not to like?"

That point is echoed by Frances Dinkelspiel, president of the Magnes Board of Directors.

"Moving the Magnes Collection to a new facility in the heart of downtown means it will continue to enhance the cultural life of Berkeley," Dinkelspiel said. "The partnership with UC will also introduce the collections to a new generation of scholars. The board of the Magnes Museum is delighted that the collection will not only be preserved, but will flourish."

Irene Hirano, former Executive Director of the Japanese American National Museum and former AAM Chair, was recently appointed Chair of the Ford Foundation.  An inspiring and helpful colleague to many CAJM members, Hirano has also participated in CAJM-sponsored panels at AAM.  CAJM continues to have a close working relationship with the JANM, as exemplified by their hosting of sessions at the Los Angeles CAJM conference earlier this year, and staff members of the institution have lent perspectives on ethnic-specific museums to other gatherings.  CAJM  congratulates Irene on this important and prestigious position, and wishes her great success.

The History of the Jewish Star in the Realm of the Union Jack
By Edward Rothstein
Published: March 16, 2010

LONDON - One of the first objects you see in the newly expanded Jewish Museum London, which opens on Wednesday, is also one of the museum's oldest: the remains of a 13th-century Jewish ritual bath (a mikvah) uncovered during a 2001 construction project in the City of London. As seen here, it is a bit too robustly reconstructed, its age and fragmentary character mollified with the use of modern materials and mirrors mounted like rays above its well.

From "Treasures of Jewish Heritage"
A banner from the 1920s at the expanded Jewish Museum London, which opens Wednesday in the Camden Town neighborhood.

But it offers testimony to a long history in which England and the Jews were locked in a complicated embrace, mixing tension and sympathy, conflict and allegiance. This relic from a Jewish home in one of London's medieval neighborhoods offers evidence of some stability and prosperity. Yet it also provides a reminder of the community's ruin: at the end of the 12th century, the Jews of York were horrifically massacred; at the end of the 13th, Jews were expelled from the country.

How could such an object not be in ruins?

Similar tensions can be sensed throughout this carefully thought-out museum, which has just undergone a £10 million (about $15 million) expansion. Designed by Long & Kentish Architects, the museum has tripled its space, establishing itself as an important addition to a new generation of Jewish institutions in cities including San Francisco and Warsaw.

Two converted buildings and a former piano factory in the Camden Town neighborhood have been joined to create four permanent galleries offering a modest but stunning array of Jewish ritual objects, a broad history of the Jews in England, a look at early-20th-century Jewish immigration, and a glimpse of the Holocaust through the life of a single survivor.

The exhibits incorporate films, interactive displays, case histories and activities for children. There are ritual objects like an 18th-century silver and coral Torah case from Iraq, as well as equipment from one of the East End's last Jewish bakeries and unclaimed items from a "deed box" of the Jews' Temporary Shelter that housed new immigrants in early-20th-century London.

But in the midst of its clear-eyed and unsentimental exploration of the Jewish past in England, there is that recurring tension.

Here, for example, is a pair of boxing shorts worn by Harry Mizler, Britain's lightweight boxing champion in 1934: on one leg is sewn a Jewish star, on the other a Union Jack.
This declaration of hyphenated identity and dual loyalty, now a familiar aspect of ethnic self-consciousness, was not always readily welcomed. After World War I, for instance, accusations were made that Jews did not serve or show sufficient military loyalty; in response, an enormous 1922 book cataloged the contrary. Displayed here, it is called "British Jewry: Book of Honour."

So, too, we learn about Benjamin Disraeli, who served in Parliament beginning in 1838 (and later became the first Jewish-born prime minister), only because he had been baptized at an early age. His co-religionist by birth, Lionel de Rothschild, was elected to Parliament four times, but couldn't take his seat until 1858, when he was no longer required to swear "on the true faith of a Christian."

Extreme generosity can also veer into extreme suspicion. We see a doll, letters and photos carried by some of the 10,000 Jewish children rescued from Nazi Germany by Britain in 1938 and 1939 in the Kindertransport. But we also learn that in 1940 some 27,000 Jewish refugees from Germany were treated as enemy aliens and held in detention camps.

It is a measure of the achievement of these exhibitions, shaped by the museum's director, Rickie Burman, and the project leader Sarah Jillings that these tensions do not dominate the history, but emerge as an underlying motif. The overall tone here is actually one of celebration, beginning in an opening gallery where, projected on multiple panels, we see videos of diverse English Jews - including a cab driver; an Indian-born, marathon-running grandmother; a Hasidic rabbi; a smoked-salmon manufacturer - talking about themselves and their religion.
In the United States some of this is familiar from the now-dominant genre of "identity museums": ethnic, religious and immigrant groups create museums, testifying to their varied trials and triumphs. These institutions often double as social centers, serving the population by recounting its past. But here, this genre scarcely exists: the Jewish Museum notes that it is the only London museum devoted to a minority group.

Oregon Jewish Museum’s new home is a very special place

The museum’s new location at 1953 NW Kearney St. in Portland transports the museum vast  leagues, if not light years, beyond its most recent location in an Old Town storefront on Northwest Davis Street and their first location, which opened in January 1999 in a small office suite in Montgomery Park. Before then, everything was in storage or still held by waiting donors.

For many years, the Mittleman Jewish Community Center has been referred to as Jewish Portland’s living room. If the J is the living room, the OJM has become the community’s study—a most inviting and uplifting study.

Here is a place where we can learn and remember. Here is a warm and welcoming repository and gallery for the community’s archives and treasures and mementoes, a place where people may gather to explore their roots, where they can learn how this state and region they call home came to be what it is today. Here is a place where our past will inform our present and inspire our future.

In a previous Jewish Review, OJM President Craig Wolner called the new facility “one of Oregon’s premier cultural and intellectual destinations.”

That about says it all. And he is right that it is Oregon’s, not just the Jewish community’s cultural asset. For within its walls evidence abounds that this Jewish community has played a leading role in the evolution and positive growth of our city and our state—our culture, our economy and the fundamental values that are the foundation of our society.

Now here is a place where the magnitude and significance of the Jewish contribution to what this entire community has become will be available and readily apparent to all.

The gallery spaces are an exercise in simple elegance in which flexibility and adaptability to a great variety of exhibition needs appears to have been a foremost consideration in their planning. The work rooms are spacious and, at last, the new office spaces—including room also for the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center—mean the museum’s talented staff won’t be tripping over one another anymore.

And then there’s the auditorium, a screening room that was central to the building’s original incarnation as a Hollywood film distribution facility dating from the early decades of the last century. The uses to which the auditorium might be put seem limitless—films, of course, lectures, classes, social events. One walks into the room and immediately thinks—in the best Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney tradition, “Hey, we can put on a show.”

The museum already has several shows scheduled for the gallery spaces.

But the best show so far at the new Oregon Jewish Museum facility is the feeling one has when one walks through the door of the place and realizes that something extraordinary, exceptional, distinctive and
altogether singular has been created there.

We all are indebted to the leaders at the museum and elsewhere in the community, the museum supporters and the museum staff for their collective achievement. The vision, expertise and commitment of the OJM board and staff have kept the museum on track from its humble beginning to this landmark moment in its history.

This is no lifeless shrine to the past. Rather, the Oregon Jewish Museum is an institution that is vibrant with the life of the Jews of Oregon of yesterday, today and all the days to come. In the museum’s new venue they at last have room to stand up again and breathe deeply

You should go there soon and often.

The London Jewish Museum of Art is a scrappy young institution, created in 2001 and camped in rented space in St. John’s Wood, off the beaten track of London’s art world.

Ben Uri, London Jewish Museum of Art

“Apocalypse in Lilac: Capriccio” (1945), a Chagall depiction of the the Holocaust, has been bought at auction by the small London Jewish Museum of Art.

But over the last nine years the museum has been diligently trying to forge a reputation for itself, adding more than 100 works to an already substantial collection that grew out of that of the Ben Uri Gallery, a Jewish artists’ society founded in London in 1915.

So when David Glasser, one of the museum’s chairmen, was perusing a Paris auction catalog a few months ago, he found it hard to believe what he saw: a previously unknown 1945 gouache by Marc Chagall. It was one of a small group of images Chagall made in direct response to the Holocaust, after he and his wife had fled France in 1941, after the German occupation and after he had begun to learn the details of the Nazi atrocities.

The gouache on heavy paper, which Chagall signed and titled himself lightly with a pencil in Russian — “Apocalypse in Lilac, Capriccio” — employs one of his familiar motifs, an image of a crucified Jesus, which he used as a metaphor for persecuted Jewry. But this crucifixion, painted in New York, where Chagall settled for several years, is one of the most brutal and disturbing ever created by an artist primarily known for his brightly colored folkloric visions.

“Apocalypse” shows a naked Christ screaming at a Nazi storm trooper below the cross, who has a backwards swastika on his arm, a Hitler-like mustache and a serpentine tail. Another small figure can be seen crucified and a second being hanged, and a man appears to be poised to stab a child. A damaged, upside-down clock falls from the sky. The darkness and directness of the work may have been a response not only to the war but also to the death of Chagall’s wife, Bella, a year earlier from a viral infection that might have been treated if not for wartime medicine shortages.

Chagall, who lived to be 97, always kept the work for himself, and two years after he died, in 1985, his son, David McNeil, sold it to a private collector in the South of France, near where Chagall died. There it remained, out of circulation and missing from the vast literature that grew up around Chagall’s long career.

Mr. Glasser, a retired executive and art collector, decided that the London Jewish Museum of Art, which had recently acquired significant works by painters including Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg and Mark Gertler, needed to do everything in its power to buy the painting, whose estimate was modest, 25,000 to 35,000 euros (about $36,000 to $50,000), in part, he thought, because the work was selling in Paris and not in London or New York, but primarily because it was so obscure and so ominous.

“Who’d want to have this on the wall in their house?” Mr. Glasser said recently. “But as a piece of history, it is hugely important. And for us, we considered it a magnificent opportunity.”

Within hours he wrote an application to the Art Fund, the 106-year-old philanthropy that helps British institutions acquire works and that had provided assistance in the purchase of several of the museum’s recent additions to its collection. The museum — whose advisers include the sculptor Anthony Caro, the architect Daniel Libeskind, the Paris dealer Lionel Pissarro (a great-grandson of the painter) and Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate — had privately estimated that the work could sell for as much as 300,000 euros (about $430,000).

The fund received the request on a Monday, and by Thursday had dispatched one of its trustees, Wendy Baron, an informal adviser to the London Jewish Museum of Art, to Paris to see the gouache in the showroom at the Tajan auction house.

“It was very powerful, a knockout,” Ms. Baron, an expert on modern British art, said on Thursday in a telephone interview. “In fact, I was very worried in the sale room to see other people looking closely at it.”

The fund agreed to provide up to 100,000 euros (about $143,000) to help the museum win the work if competition materialized. But in the end, at a poorly attended sale in late October, Mr. Glasser was able to buy it for 30,000 euros (about $43,000) with money provided by one of the museum’s benefactors. After remaining silent about it for several weeks amid worries that France might decide to use its pre-emption laws to void the sale and keep the work for a French institution, the painting, 20 by 14 inches, was shipped to London.

And beginning on Thursday, it will go on public display for the first time, at the Osborne Samuel gallery in Mayfair, before moving into the museum’s permanent collection at the end of the month. In going on view, it will become another of the notable publicly exhibited examples of Chagall’s wartime imagery, like the “Yellow Crucifixion” from 1943, at the Georges Pompidou Center, and the “White Crucifixion” from 1938 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Although in many of his works Chagall had reacted to events in Germany, he usually did not depict them but used symbols — such as the crucifixion, a Jew holding a Torah, a mother protecting her child or a falling angel — to suggest what was happening there,” writes Ziva Amishai-Maisels, a Chagall scholar and professor emeritus at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in a catalog to accompany the exhibition of the painting. “Although he still used some of these symbols in ‘Apocalypse,’ he combined them with the reality of the Holocaust in a manner that was very rare in his work. This and the way he depicted the conflict between the Nazi and the naked Christ make this a unique work.”

Ms. Baron, of the Art Fund, agreed. “I think it is really a tremendous coup,” she said, “to get it for this collection and for the country.”

September 11, 2009

Chairman David Glasser said that while there was "enormous disappointment" that its bid to move the former premises of the Theatre Museum in Russell Street in Covent Garden had failed, an alternative plan would be put into action straightaway that would achieve the same aim.

"We believe we ended up in second place behind the Public Catalogue Fund. It would have been amazing for us to have a Jewish museum of art in the heart of London," said Mr Glasser. "We have done huge amounts of work and it would have been superb. But we couldn't beat the Public Catalogue Foundation."

The museum, currently housed in St John's Wood, had been advised that an application would have been looked on with great interest by the private owners of the venue, said Mr Glasser.

"We assembled a team of architects, designers, the whole package, and received many letters of support from museum directors around the world. The most encouraging thing for us is that it is astonishing that any Jewish museum could be considered by the mainstream and get to that point."

While much of the work on the bid was given free, he said it still cost what he described as a "meaningful" amount of money, though he refused to say how much.

The process showed that the Ben Uri has been embraced and accepted by the establishment as a British museum that has a Jewish context and that it has become a representative of the Jewish community in the mainstream, said Mr Glasser.

"While we are disappointed, all the work we have done on planning and design will not be wasted as we have a ‘plan B' and it will be transferred to that."

Mr Glasser said that the alternative venue had already been identified and though it was also in Westminster, he would not give away the exact location yet.

"What is certain is that a prominent central London base is exactly where the Ben Uri should be," he added.

Jewish Museum of Maryland Plans Expansion on Site of Lenny's Deli


(ISJM) In August, the Jewish Museum of Baltimore announced the purchase of the site of Lenny's Deli on "Corned Beef Row" adjacent to the museum site - home of two historic 19th century synagogues.

The Deli will continue to operate at its present location for the next five years, but the museum's eventual expansion to the space to provide room for a new educational wing and on-site parking.

The cost of the purchase was $1.5 million, made possible by a grant from the Herbert Bearman Foundation which has already been a major benefactor to the institution (an existing wing is already named for Herbert Bearman).

While Lenny's is viewed by many Baltimoreans of this generation as an historic institution, the Lombard (Corned Beef Row) location was opened only in 1991. Still, it is the last vestige of a much older tradition of Jewish eateries in the neighborhood.

An artist who visited the Second Temple returned to his Galilee home some 2,000 years ago amazed by what he'd seen.  In a synagogue on Lake Kinneret's shores, he carved the candelabra he'd seen into a rock.

The stone and other discoveries were recently uncovered by an Israel Antiquities Authority dig near Moshava Migdal. The dig uncovered the earliest known synagogue dated to the days of the Second Temple.

The dig is intended as a salvage operation ahead of the construction of a hotel on a site owned by the Franciscan church.

The uncovered synagogue dates to 50 BC to 100 AD, and at its center the engraving of the seven-branched lamp, or menorah, "unlike any ever seen" according to workers at the site.

According the Antiquities Authority "starting with the beginning of the dig three weeks ago, we realized we had found something interesting. The findings at the site were also well preserved."

The synagogue's central hall measured 120 meters square and was surrounded by benches for attendees. On the floor was a mosaic and the walls were frescoed.

In the hall the square stone was uncovered, decorated with engravings on all four sides and tip.

One engraving includes the seven-branched lamp which stands on a single leg with a triangle base with vessels on either side.

"This is a very exciting and unique discovery, this is the first time a lamp engraving from the Second Temple age has been uncovered, the earliest lamp in a Jewish context, dated to the beginning of the Roman period," site director Dina Avshalom-Gorni said.

A representative of the Franciscan church-owned company planning the 122-room hotel also expressed joy at the discovery and stated it strengthens the church's resolve to establish an interdenominational dialogue center in the region.

The Antiquities Authority said the dig site is still closed to visitors.

(RNS) Call it the Jewish version of American Idol: after more than 209,000 votes from around the world, 18 men and women have been chosen for the new National Museum of American Jewish History's Hall of Fame.

The museum, slated to open in November 2010 in Philadelphia, had listed 218 finalists on its Web site for its "Only in America" gallery, featuring artists, athletes, scientists, civic and religious leaders.

Based on the poll results and input from historians, the winners ranged from established celebrities, such as Barbra Streisand and Steven Spielberg, to more Judaism-specific figures, including Rabbis Mordecai Kaplan and Isaac Mayer Wise, who founded the Reconstructionist and Reform movements, respectively.

Officials will not release how many votes each finalist had received, to avoid turning an educational exhibit into "a popularity contest," explained Josh Perelman, deputy director for programming and museum historian.

"They have all made monumental marks on America, American culture and American Jewish life," he added. "Jews have had 350 years of experience in this country, and what unifies these people is that they were able to take the opportunities afforded to them in America, through the freedoms we all have, to excel in their fields."

The other honorees will include: musicians Irving Berlin and Leonard Bernstein; Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis; physicist Albert Einstein; baseball pitcher Sandy Koufax; cosmetics entrepreneur and philanthropist Estee Lauder; activist poet Emma Lazarus; Bible translator Rabbi Isaac Leeser; Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir; polio vaccine inventor Jonas Salk; labor leader Rose Schneiderman; Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer; Hasidic Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson; and Zionist women's leader Henrietta Szold.

The number 18 was chosen for its religious significance, as the Hebrew numerical symbol of life. Over time, the Hall of Fame will become a rotating gallery, featuring additional American Jews who have made major achievements.

Finalists who didn't make the initial cut included: poet Allen Ginsberg; Secretary of State Henry Kissinger; entertainer Bette Midler; choreographer Jerome Robbins; and The Three Stooges. Voters can continue submitting names to the museum at www.nmajh.org.

(Monday, September 14, 2009)

J-Weekly, Thursday, August 27, 2009

Surfing for Jewish art? Magnes collection hits the Internet by Dan Pine, Staff Writer

By Labor Day, admirers of the Judah L. Magnes Museum will be able to see much of the institution's art collections whenever they want. Even on their iPhones.

The Berkeley museum's years-long project to digitize and display much of its vast collection online has reached fruition, meaning 13,000 items - from ketubahs to paintings to historical documents - will soon be a mouse click away.

The Magnes has joined other museums around the world in an effort to digitize and post their collections. "We're in the 21st century," said Magnes acting director and chief curator Alla Efimova. "There is an expectation that for researchers, the public and students, access needs to be provided online."

"This is tremendously exciting, both for the Magnes and for researchers and scholars around the world," added Frances Dinkelspiel, the museum's board president. "Over the last 45 years, the Magnes has created a tremendous collection. Much of this stuff has been unknown and unexamined, except for the select scholars who are able to come into the building and examine them."

With a grant from the Toole Media Fund, the project began a few years ago by digitizing several hundred objects and records from the museum's North African and Indian collection, including manuscripts, ceremonial objects and folk art.

Later, as more funding was secured, the scope expanded to cover the broad spectrum of Magnes collections, including its modern art and decorative art holdings, as well as documents from the Western Jewish History Center.

Users can search and retrieve information on thousands of art objects, pieces of Judaica, manuscripts, photographs and the like, spanning the whole of the Jewish diaspora.

Employing state-of-the-art software developed in Israel (the same sort used by Yad Vashem and the Israel Museum), the Magnes online catalog offers several novel features, according to Francesco Spagnolo, the museum's director of research and collections.

The digital programs at the Magnes also receive support from the Hellman Family Foundation and the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Not only are many of the 13,000 items illustrated and described in detail, a combination of links, search engines and interfacing with social networking sites (such as Flickr and Twitter) offer multiple approaches to the Magnes' treasures.

"Because the collection is so diverse - manuscripts, archival materials, objects, art, documents - we needed a way to catalog everything," Efimova said. "We wanted to make sure there was a kind of ease. That was the premise: easy to use and search."

Even though the official launch won't occur until the end of this month or in early September, users can give the site a whirl at http://www.magnesalm.org. After the launch, the catalog will be linked to the museum's main Web site at http://www.magnes.org.

Many of the items in the online archive rarely make it to gallery exhibitions, which should make the online catalog all the more appealing, not to mention democratic, according to Efimova.

"It's a way of releasing control of a collection," she said. "If you're the only one who can go into the vault, you have a certain hierarchy of likes and dislikes, but once you put it out there, you realize people begin to love different images. Their attention is piqued by things different from the curator."

The digitization project has spun off into several side projects on the main Magnes Web site, such as narratives about notable Jewish families, personal stories about objects in the archives and Flickr slideshows of smaller collections (some of them bequeathed by local families). All of these help paint portraits of Jewish life in California and beyond.

Efimova also sees the digitization project as a form of conservation, because objects don't need to be over-handled, thus protecting them if they are fragile or sensitive to light.

Of course, that brings up one of the pitfalls of an online museum: The "wow" factor might not be as strong as it might be when coming face-to-face with a piece of art.

"An object has an aura, a texture, you will not see online," Efimova conceded. "But digitization is not meant to preclude that experience."

"The committee for the Russian-Jewish Museum of Tolerance finalized the German-based Graft Architects‘ design for the new museum.  The existing Jewish community center in Moscow contains several Jewish institutions, such as a yeshiva and a university, yet the addition of Grafts’ museum will be the final piece in completing this cultural space.   The museum, which will include a library, a center for Judaic studies and conference rooms, will commemorate Russian-Jewish history and include galleries of Jewish art.

Graft Architects will preserve the landmark garage building while making the interior compatible for contemporary museum expositions. The exterior of the structure will remain untouched, making it a visible monument of Russian heritage, yet the building will be enlarged with the addition of underground floors covering 15,000 square meters.  The new interior will include undulating floors and surfaces that create an organic landscape.  This dynamic interior offers a highly versatile setting for various events and enhances the original shell of the building.   The renovation and expansion is a perfect blend of history mixing with the present."

More pictures

The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art (PMJA), was founded at Congregation Rodeph Shalom on Broad Street in 1975.  It presents contemporary art exhibits that illuminate the Jewish experience. Each year the museum organizes three solo and group shows and maintains permanent collection of works by artists including William Anastasi, Chaim Gross, Shelley Spector, Boaz Vaadia and Roman Vishniac, all of whom exhibited at the PMJA.  Mazel tov from CAJM to both museum leaders.