why the Jewish Museum London is closing its Camden site

Below strain from the price of residing disaster, the Jewish Museum London will shut its doorways on 30 July and promote the constructing to fund its deliberate transfer to a brand new and larger house. In a press assertion asserting the information earlier on 1 June, the museum of British Jewish historical past and tradition stated it was dealing with “unanticipated rising prices” and finally wanted to develop into “extra sustainable into the long run”.

The price of residing disaster was the “instant set off” that made the present constructing in Camden, north London, “untenable”, the museum’s chair Nick Viner tells The Artwork Newspaper. Since 2010, the museum has been positioned in a Georgian city home annexed to a former piano manufacturing facility, which “was already comparatively arduous to warmth and funky and costly to take care of”, he says. A pointy 70% enhance in vitality payments and the affect of inflation on development prices meant “vital capital sums” have been wanted simply to hold out “fundamental constructing upkeep”.

These challenges come on the heels of a “far more troublesome buying and selling setting” created by the Covid-19 pandemic, Viner says. Customer numbers have been “sluggish to get better” and the emergency grants from the federal government and main funding our bodies have ceased. The Jewish Museum London had additionally skilled an ancient times of “monetary disaster” in 2019, prompting a evaluate of its donor-dependent enterprise mannequin.

“Monetary issues grew to become so all-consuming that it pushed us to the choice [to sell the building],” Viner says, however the board of trustees additionally felt that the Camden web site “had a variety of constraints which didn’t match with our long-term imaginative and prescient”. The situation was “fairly hidden away” and had restricted area to show the gathering, organise non permanent exhibitions and welcome visiting college teams. Previous exhibitions embrace a present of Life? Or Theatre?, the extraordinary sequence of 200 gouaches made by the German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon earlier than her deportation to Auschwitz in 1943.

London has “the smallest Jewish museum amongst main European cities”, the museum says, “regardless of being house to the second largest Jewish group and boasting the second largest assortment”. In response to 2021 census information, round 145,000 individuals self-identifying as Jewish dwell in better London, which accounts for greater than half of the overall British Jewish inhabitants of 270,000 in England and Wales. The museum’s assortment counts greater than 40,000 objects of Judaica and social historical past.

The museum trustees hope the sale of the Camden constructing will kick off a serious fundraising marketing campaign for a “extra distinguished” future venue with area for extra bold shows, schooling programming and all-important revenue-generating actions. In contrast to the state-subsidised Jewish museums elsewhere in Europe, the mission “will rely upon non-public funders” from the British Jewish group, Viner says. The objective is to open in time for the museum’s centenary in 2032.

Whereas the search will get below approach for a brand new everlasting house, the museum plans to reopen in a “pop-up” location in central London as quickly as subsequent 12 months, Viner says. Even with no bodily area, outreach work with colleges is about to proceed and the museum is in talks to lend items from the gathering to establishments across the UK from the autumn.