JWeekly : Magnes Opus. Museum Springs Back to Life With New Berkeley Facility – 12.08.2011

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The new Magnes is located in the heart of downtown Berkeley.photo/keegan houser

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Thursday, December 8, 2011 | return to: cover story

Magnes opus: Museum springs back tolife with new Berkeley facilityby dan pine, j. staff

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Alla Efimova wants the new museum to be a big surprise.

The director of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life ishoping the debut of the facilitys new downtown Berkeley

home will astonish those who may have said too hasty a

Kaddish.

Opening Jan. 22, 2012, the 25,000-square-foot museum will not only

house a majority of the Magnes collections, but it also will serve as a

research center and Jewish communal gathering place.

The plan is to create a true

center for Jewish studies andJewish culture, Efimova says.

Well have visiting scholars,

fellows and artists,

encouraged to work with the

collection. [The new Magnes]

means an accessible,

functional space for the EastBay Jewish community to gather. Its a visible sign that the

community is here.

The opening caps a period of change for the institution.

Though the move to Allston Way, on a prime blockbetween the downtown Berkeley BART station and the U.C.

Berkeley campus, had been long planned, the recession

forced the Magnes leadership to make some hard choices.

In July 2010, all collections more than 15,000 Jewish

artifacts, Judaica, music, documents, photographs and

archival materials related to Jews in the diaspora and the

American West were gifted to U.C. Berkeley.

The former Judah L. Magnes Museum then morphed into the Magnes Museum Foundation, a supporting

organization of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Endowment Fund and the Jewish Community

Foundation (which is part of the Jewish Federation of the East Bay).

The 8,500-square-foot Russell Street mansion, which served as home base for decades, was sold for

close to $2 million, leaving the Magnes temporarily homeless.

Such tumultuous changes might have

rocked other institutions, but the Magnes

staff and board saw an opportunity. Even

before the economic downturn, which left

many nonprofits reeling, the plan had

been to move to the Allston Way

building, purchased in 1997.

Now, factoring in the rich academic

research resources available at U.C.

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Gallery space while still under construction

A Torah holder, minus the scroll, in storage

Berkeley, proceeds from the Russell

Street sale and committed donors to the

Magnes, the institution is reborn.

Next year is the 50th anniversary of the

founding, says Francesco Spagnolo, the

Magnes curator of collections. This is an

institution that has been game-changing,inspired many groups and individuals,

and were going to keep it that way.

The surprise Efimova hopes to spring isthe sheer scope and beauty of the

facility. Designed by the San Francisco

firm Pfau Long Architecture, the newMagnes lives in a totally renovated

building, formerly a printing plant.

The building has very good bones, says Efimova, but is very malleable.

The space is sleek lots of glass and

wood with a gallery, an auditorium,

conference rooms and a research room.

The foyer features display cases made

from glass and salvaged elm that will

show pieces from the extensive

collection.

People will be wonderfully surprised by

how beautiful the new space is, says

Frances Dinkelspiel, a former Magnesboard president and now co-chair of its

fundraising arm, Friends of the Magnes.

They will want to have their events in

the space, come to lectures and exhibits

and [make] this a great community

hub.

The virtual heart of the new Magnes,

however, is the collection itself. Even if

you cant exactly see it.

Lining the floor are climate-controlled stacks, shelves and compact storage bins, many of them

expandable with the push of a button, revealing the treasures within.

Those bins contain everything from the HMS Queen Marys one-time Torah ark, to a 1920s-era manual

typewriter with Yiddish keys, to a clay pickle jar from Shensons, the long-gone San Francisco

delicatessen.

At least, Spagnolo thinks it might have been a pickle jar.

Waiting for cataloging, display and study is a collection of jewelry some dating back to the 17th

century from the Jewish community of Djerba, Tunisia, including a headband intended for a baby

boy on the occasion of his bris, decorated with coins, tree sap and hamsas.

Spagnolo just took in a donated boxful of memorabilia, circa 1928, from Camp Kelowa, a defunct

Jewish summer camp near Huntington Lake, south of Yosemite.

The Magnes collection also includes

books, posters, ketubahs, paintings and

3,000 postcards, though the rare books

are kept off-site at U.C. Berkeleys

Bancroft Library.

Also at Bancroft is the massive collection

of documents that makes up the Western

Jewish Americana archives (known asthe Western Jewish History Center at the

former Magnes Museum). Much of that

material is still being processed and

cataloged.

Though treasures from the collection will

take turns going on display, exhibitions

will not necessarily be the main event.

The hope is to make the museum a

magnet for scholars interested in

studying the collection up close.

That conceivably includes the U.C. Berkeley Jewish Studies department, the Jewish law library at

Berkeley Law and other interdisciplinary campus assets the Magnes will work with in the years ahead.

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Alla Efimova photos/cathleen maclearie

Erich Gruen, the co-chair of U.C. Berkeleys Jewish Studies program, already has plans to collaborate

with the Magnes, including holding its 2012 Pell Lecture there next February. Stanford professor Aron

Rodrigue will talk about the history of Sephardic Jews in Rhodes.

Our hope is that our students will use the [Magnes] collection on a much more systematic basis,

Gruen says. If all goes well, students and faculty will make greater use of its holdings, which are rich

and varied.

It brings it back to the core: educating through collection,

Efimova says of the new Magnes. Thats how it started and

thats what it ended up being.

The Judah L. Magnes Museum was founded in 1962 by Berkeley

art lover Seymour Fromer, who was 87 when he died in 2009.

Named for the prominent Jewish leader who was raised inOakland in the 1880s, the museum started out life in a $75-a-

month loft over Oaklands now-closed Parkway Theater.

At one point, Fromer fell behind in the rent. When the landlordstopped by to collect, he was so taken by the artworks that he

let his tenant stay on for free.

In 1966, the museum moved to an elegant, old mansion on a

quiet, tree-lined, residential street in Berkeleys Elmwood

district. Initially, the Magnes specialized in ceremonial art,

posters and paintings of Jewish themes. Fromer and his wife,

Rebecca, expanded the collection by rescuing artifacts from

endangered Jewish communities in places such as

Czechoslovakia, Morocco, Egypt and India.

All told, the Fromers collected some 11,000 pieces of Judaica

and fine art, 10,000 rare and other Jewish-themed books, along

with papers and photos. Much of that material was housed in theWestern Jewish History Center, which Fromer helped establish in

1967.

The Magnes also faced challenges at different points during its existence.

A merger with San Franciscos Contemporary Jewish Museum in 2002 proved unworkable and was

dissolved. During the period of the merger, the Magnes lost its curatorial staff and closed for the

summer of 2002. It didnt reopen with regular hours until October 2003.

But the ship began to right itself once Efimova, a Russian-born historian, author and former lecturer at

U.C. Berkeleys department of art history, joined in 2003. Italian-born Spagnolo is a double threat as a

scholar of Jewish studies and Jewish music. He came aboard in 2007.

With the opening next month, Efimova, Spagnolo and their staff

will waste no time putting the facility to use.

The first exhibition, The Magnes Effect: Five Decades ofCollecting, will feature a diverse sampling of objects from the

archives. It runs through the summer.

Early next year, Israeli composer and installation artist

Emmanuel Witzthum will become the Magnes first artist-in-residence when he presents Dissolving Localities, a multimedia

art project that blends ambient street sounds from Berkeley with

the same sort of aural material from his hometown of Jerusalem.

The Magnes continues to acquire new material. A notable recent

acquisition features sketches for murals by the late San

Francisco muralist Bernard Zakheim, who oversaw the

Depression-era frescos inside Coit Tower.

Applications also are being accepted for the first Magnes Fellowship in Jewish Studies, which will select

U.C. Berkeley graduate students for yearlong research projects conducted at the Magnes.

For now, the Magnes has attained a measure of financial stability. We have a solid platform, Efimovasays, and we benefit from economies of scale, being part of the university.

In addition, the S.F.-based Koret Foundation, the Taube Family Foundation and the Hellman Family

Foundation together gave $2.5 million, guaranteeing an operating budget to help the new Magnes

transition through its first five years.

Friends of the Magnes will not wait that long to start building up an endowment.

We need the community to step up to ensure the longevity of the Magnes collections, Dinkelspiel

says. I hope that being part of U.C. Berkeley will raise the Magnes profile so people around the region,

the state and the world will come to better understand what a fantastic collection it is.

In the not-so-distant future, the Jewish Music Festival, Lehrhaus Judaica, the Marsh (a theater located

across the street) and other local institutions will partner with the Magnes, according to Efimova.


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All in all, its an auspicious start to get the museum up and running for at least the next 50 years.

Some people thought the Magnes has disappeared, Dinkelspiel says. It hasnt. Its only gotten

better.

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, open house 12 to 4 p.m. Jan. 22, 2012. 2121

Allston Way, Berkeley. (510) 643-2526 or http://www.magnes.org .

cover photo | cathleen maclearie

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Magnes

This is tremendously exciting for our entire communityWe are blessed.

Bshaa tova umutzlachat!

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Posted by Berkeleyreader12/08/2011 at 08:16 PM

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JWeekly : Magnes Opus. Museum Springs Back to Life With New Berkeley Facility – 12.08.2011