The Jewish Museum London was a museum of British Jewish life, history and identity. The museum was situated in Camden Town in the London Borough of Camden, north London. It was a place for people of all faiths to explore Jewish history, culture, and heritage. The museum had a dedicated education team, with a programme for schools, community groups and families. Charles, Prince of Wales (later King Charles III) was a patron of the museum.[1]
The events, programmes and activities at the museum aimed to provoke questions, challenge prejudice, and encourage understanding.
The museum closed during the covid-19 pandemic in the UK and reopened for two days a week in July 2021, but visitor numbers and income did not recover.[2] The museum closed indefinitely on 30 July 2023, loaning collections to other heritage organisations,[3] intending to sell the building and move elsewhere taking up to five years to plan and finance the move.[4]
History
The museum, a registered charity,[5] was founded in 1932 in the Jewish communal headquarters in Bloomsbury. In 1995, it moved to its current location in Camden Town. Until 2007 it had a sister museum in Finchley, operated by the same charitable trust and sited within the Sternberg Centre. The Camden branch reopened in 2010 after two years of major building and extension work.[6][7] The £10 million renovation was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and private donations.
The museum housed a major international-level collection of Jewish ceremonial art including the Lindo lamp, an early example of a British Hanukkah menorah.[9] The building included a gallery entitled Judaism: A Living Faith, displaying the museum's noted collection of Jewish ceremonial art. This collection had been awarded "designated" status by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council in recognition of its outstanding national importance.[9] The museum's Holocaust Gallery included items and filmed survivor testimony from Leon Greenman,[10] who was one of the few British subjects to be interned in the death camps section at Auschwitz.
The museum also had exhibitions recounting the history of Jewish life in England, supported by a diverse collection of objects. There were also collections of paintings, prints and drawings, and an archive of photographs, which consisted mainly of black and white photographs from the 1900s to the 1940s, along with militaria from the former Jewish Military Museum, which merged into it in January 2015.[11]
Exhibitions
There were two temporary exhibition spaces.[clarification needed] The third floor housed major exhibitions, with smaller exhibitions in the temporary exhibition space on the ground floor.
Jews, Money, Myth, exploring antisemitic imagery linking Jews with money. Alongside manifestations of antisemitic imagery dating back to Judas and Thirty pieces of silver, the exhibit featured a display case of the popular Polish "Lucky Jew" figurines.[12][13]
