The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life (formerly the Judah L. Magnes Museum) is an extensive collection of Jewish history, art, and culture at the University of California, Berkeley. The Magnes Collection comprises more than 45,000 Jewish artworks, artifacts, photographs, and manuscripts, the third largest collection of its kind in the United States. The holdings of The Magnes Collection are catalogued into three distinct areas, which together constitute the single collection: the Archives, the Library, and the Museum.

Museum The Museum holdings of The Magnes encompass two main areas: Jewish Art and Jewish Life. The Jewish Art collection includes painting and sculpture, photography, works on paper and artist books, as well as digital and mixed media. The Jewish Life collection includes thousands of objects representing personal and family rituals, synagogue and communal life, and the social interactions among Jewish and host communities in the Global Jewish Diaspora throughout history.

Archives The archival holdings have been a central feature of the collecting interests of the Magnes since its inception. The intention is to provide a wide-ranging approach to the Jewish experience in its many manifestations. The archival collections complement museum and library holdings and include manuscripts, photographs, personal papers, and institutional and professional records according to two collecting areas: The Global Jewish Diaspora collections and The Western Jewish Americana collections.

Library The library holdings of The Magnes include rare and illustrated books from the global Jewish diaspora, periodicals, reference and original materials about Jewish history in the American West, as well as sound recordings, music books and manuscripts.

Locations The Magnes Collection's museum, with exhibition and event spaces, is located at 2121 Allston Way in downtown Berkeley; the building, previously a printing plant, was given a "utilitarian but sparkling" renovation by Pfau Long Architects of San Francisco, with a "sleek and transparent" interior including custom case work by Pacassa Studios of Oakland.

The Magnes Collection archives are held at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

History The museum was founded in 1962 by Seymour Fromer and Rebecca Camhi Fromer, and named for Jewish activist Rabbi Judah L. Magnes (1877–1948), a native of Oakland, California and co-founder of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Beginning as one room above the Parkway Movie Theater off Lake Merritt in downtown Oakland, the museum eventually expanded and relocated to the former Burke Mansion (by architect Daniel J. Patterson) at 2911 Russell Street in Berkeley. Artist Beatrice Winn Berlin taught printmaking classes in the 1970s.

The Fromers' collecting activities ranged from salvaging Yiddish LP records from dumpsters and collecting libraries of Yiddish books from Jewish chicken farmers in Petaluma, California, to retrieving Judaica poised to be discarded as Jewish life in various regions was diminishing, among them Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, India, and Central Europe.

During the 2000s, negotiations were held to merge the Judah L. Magnes Museum with the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco, but failed to produce an agreement to combine the two institutions.

In 2010, the Judah L. Magnes Museum donated its collection to the University of California, Berkeley, which agreed to display and preserve the museum's artifacts, and to collect new acquisitions. As part of the agreement, the collection was moved from the 8,600-square-foot house on Russell Street in Berkeley to a 25,000-square-foot building on Allston Way in downtown Berkeley. The Magnes Museum's board of directors had purchased the Allston Way building in 1997.

The museum reopened in its new facility on January 22, 2012. Its name was changed from the Judah L. Magnes Museum to the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.

Exhibitions Since its founding in 1962, the Magnes has presented exhibitions that break new ground in Jewish Studies research, build upon the collaboration between curators and UC Berkeley faculty and students, expand Judaica connoisseurship, introduce under-recognized Jewish artists of the 20th century, and take risks with experimental projects by contemporary artists. Many exhibitions draw on the extensive collections, or introduce commissioned works that use the collections as inspiration.

Since re-opening in 2012, the Magnes has acquired two major collections which have resulted in multiple exhibitions: 450 artworks by Arthur Szyk, a Polish Jewish artist and political caricaturist whose subjects span some of the most profound events of the 20th century, acquired in 2017, and in 2018, the archives of photographer Roman Vishniac, comprising over 30,000 images, audiovisual materials, correspondence, and memorabilia, a gift from his daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, which marked the largest donation the Magnes has yet received (tripling the number of items in its collection) and the third most valuable gifted collection ever received by the University of California, Berkeley.

Notable exhibitions include: In Plain Sight: Jewish Arts and Lives in the Muslim World, 2024 Cities and Wars: Roman Vishniac in Berlin and Jerusalem 1947/1967, 2023 In Real Times: Arthur Szyk, Art & Human Rights (1926-1951), 2022 Souvenirs from Utopia: The Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem (1906-1932), 2020 Memory Objects: Judaica Collections and Global Migrations, 2019 Project "Holy Land": Yaakov Benor-Kalter's Photographs of British Mandate Palestine, 1923-1940, 2018 The Worlds of Arthur Szyk | The Taube Family Arthur Szyk Collection, 2018 Pièces de Résistance: Echoes of Judaea Capta From Ancient Coins to Modern Art, 2018 Sketching Fiddler: Set Designs by Mentor Huebner, 2017 From the Photographer’s Archive: Roman Vishniac, 2017 By Design: American Jewish Education in The World Over Cover Art (1946-1957), 2016 I-Tal-Yah: An Island of Divine Dew. Italian Crossroads in Jewish Culture, 2016 From Mendelssohn To Mendelssohn: German Jewish Encounters in Art, Music, and Material Culture, 2016 The Future of Memory: Jewish Culture in the Digital Age, 2015 The Secret Language of Flowers: Botanical Drawings from Israel, 1949-1950, 2015 Literary Minds: Soviet Jewish Writers portrayed by Matvei Vaisberg, 2014 Saved by The Bay: The Intellectual Migration from Fascist Europe to UC Berkeley, 2014 Holy Land, California: Prints by Albert Garvey, 1974, 2013 Mayer Kirshenblatt, They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood before the Holocaust, 2007 Jonathon Keats, The First Intergalactic Art Exposition, 2006-2007 Lazar Khidekel: Surviving Suprematism, 2004–2005 Alfred Henry Jacobs, 2003-2004 Souvenirs from Israel, 1948-1998, 1998 The Legacy of Boris Deutsch: A Centennial Exhibition, 1992 Elizabeth Fleischmann: Pioneer X-Ray Photographer, 1990Palmquist, Peter E. Elizabeth Fleischmann: Pioneer X-Ray Photographer (exhibition catalogue), Berkeley, California: Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1990. Ben-Zion: A Tradition of Independence, 1986 Beth Ames Swartz, Israel Revisited, 1982–1983 The Decorative World of Ori Sherman, 1980; In Twilight: Ori Sherman's Creation, 2022 Paper-Cuts by Yehudit Shadur, 1978 Baruch Nachshon, The Torah Is Deeper than the Ocean, 1972 Jacques Schnier, Transparencies and Reflections, 1971. Aaron Goodelman retrospective, 1965.

See also Judah Leon Magnes Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture Western Jewish History Center at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco

References

External links

Official site Search the Magnes Collection MagnusMuseum at flickr.com, photos of events and images from the Collection, including entire exhibitions