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EXHIBITION REVIEW
A Jewish Museum Shifts Identity
Keegan Houser
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life A Bay Area museum is part of the University of California, Berkeley. Aboveleft, Italian Book of Esther scroll; right, German Torah binder, both 18th century. More Photos »
By EDWARD ROTHSTEINPublished: January 22, 2012
BERKELEY, Calif. — The story of how the Judah L. Magnes Museum— whose collection of Judaica is the third largest in the country —became the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the BancroftLibrary of the University of California, Berkeley, might not seemterribly ripe with complication or implication. In recent years smallprivate museums facing financial strain have often sought refuge bynegotiating new lives within universities. Perhaps on Sunday, whenthe Magnes opened its doors to the public in a building it had longowned near the campus here, it was simply inaugurating anotherphase of its 50-year life.
But along the way the Magnes has hadmore than its share of high drama,including a much anticipated union
with another local Jewish museum in 2002, closely followed by a quickie divorce ongrounds of irreconcilable differences. Then, the Magnes had to watch as its onetimepartner achieved local glory as the Contemporary Jewish Museum, opening in downtownSan Francisco in 2008 in a new building designed by Daniel Libeskind. Meanwhile theMagnes struggled to map out a future for its rambling and exotic collection of some
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Magnes JudaicaMuseum JoinsBerkeley Library -Review
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Magnes Collection of Jewish Artand Life
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15,000 objects and manuscripts, which since 1966 had beenhoused in a rambling and exotic mansion on a residentialstreet. It attracted no more than 10,000 visitors annuallyand cost $2 million a year to maintain.
The story also has larger resonance. The fate of the Magneshas much to do with the evolution of the American identitymuseum, with its chronicles of ethnic liberation amidhardship. And it is also intimately connected to the politicaland cultural temperament of the Bay Area.
But to understand those issues it is best, first, to considerthe collection itself. The Magnes was created in 1962 bySeymour Fromer, a Jewish educator, and Rebecca CamhiFromer, his wife. Its artifacts were deliberately wide-ranging, including not just Jewish ritual objects butmanuscripts, music and ephemera. As the collections grewthey shed light on Jewish life in the pioneering era of theAmerican West, on Jewish observance in communities inIndia or Tunisia, and on artworks that testified in someway to Jewish experience in the 20th century. Over thedecades scholarly catalogs were published and exhibitions
were mounted in the museum’s Berkeley mansion, examining, say, the culture of KurdishJews or the nature of Jewish cemeteries during the Gold Rush.
I visited the Magnes only once in its old home, and its slightly ramshackle style, along withits displays mixing the eccentric traditional and the provocatively experimental, gave it analmost esoteric charm. Only a small fraction of the collection was on site, and only a smallpart of that was ever on display. But the place, even in its late days, was clearly the work ofparticular personalities with their own idiosyncrasies and preoccupations. It was not an“objective” museum; it was personal, invitational, as if saying, “Come and look at what wehave gathered and learned.”
Now all that has been — as was once said — “modernized.” The Magnes Collection,donated to the university along with a lease on its new building, is still under thedirectorship of the Russian-born art historian Alla Efimova, who is partly revisiting herpast: before joining the Magnes in 2003 she had taught in Berkeley’s art historydepartment and had worked in the school’s art museum. The Magnes’s Italian-borncurator, Francesco Spagnolo, who holds a doctorate from Hebrew University in Jerusalemand has taught both philosophy and music, remains in place as well. Eighty percent of thecollection is now on site; a digital catalog of its riches is developing, along with an onlinephotographic record.
But the new Magnes Collection bears little resemblance to the old Magnes Museum. Thenew building, near the campus, once a printing plant, filters away most glints ofpersonality. The San Francisco architect Peter Pfau has made it crisp, spare, rectilinearand clean. Its design also ensures that archival storage drawers and cabinets can be seenon either side of a central 1,500-square-foot exhibition gallery.
Function has changed along with design. Its largest space is a gathering place for events,concerts and lectures: an auditorium. Another room is designed for researchers toexamine material from the archives. The Magnes, we sense, is primarily a place for study,lectures and social gatherings, the main modes of university life.
The museum aspect — the public display of artifacts and interpretations — is more muted.
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A version of this review appeared in print on January 23, 2012, on pageC1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Jewish Museum ShiftsIdentity.
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Partly this is because the largest gallery space is temporarily given over to a video artinstallation, “Dissolving Localities,” created by Emmanuel Witzthum and Arik Futterman;it overlays sounds and images from Jerusalem on one large screen and of Berkeley on theother. It wasn’t complete when I visited, but it was difficult to imagine it as much morethan a conceptual commentary on the collection.
The central gallery is where we are meant to focus, where the first temporary exhibition istitled “The Magnes Effect: Five Decades of Collecting.” It is a sampling of the museum’sholdings. There is a marriage contract from 1915 from the Kochi Jewish community ofIndia and a Jewish wedding dress from 19th-century Rhodes, Greece. A painting showsthe early-20th-century incarnation of San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El. A posteradvertises the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which the Magnes helped establish. Anda sword and scabbard are shown from 19th-century Palestine: they were presented by theOttoman government to the Jerusalem-born businessman Yosef Navon to honor his role inthe creation of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway in 1892.
Each object, of course, could easily become a centerpiece of another exhibition, but theirpresentation here seemed less important than the suggestion that these were markers for aprofusion of other objects, which could be seen on either side, encased in the archivalcabinetry. The point of the display is how much more there is to display. But this meansthat being a museum has become secondary to the other roles the Magnes is taking on.
This may simply be the price a private institution must pay to ensure that its collection iscared for, that it will serve scholars and that it will, over time, become a center for socialand intellectual life. (Its current annual budget is $820,000.) But the compromises aresignificant; it is also unfortunate that one of the cores of the Magnes, the collectionsrelating to Western Jewish life, are being folded into the Bancroft Library. They will fill outthe university’s collection about the history of the American West instead of serving theMagnes’s survey of Jewish life and history.
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The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life is at 2121 Allston Way, near Shattuck
Avenue, Berkeley, Calif.; magnes.org.
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