The Jewish Museum

10/19/2026

October is National Archaeology Month, dedicated to exploring cultural heritage, historical preservation, and public education.

In the Jewish Museum’s simulated archaeological dig, visitors uncover replicas of objects from the Museum’s collection and consider what they tell us about how communities lived, worked, and interacted in the ancient world.

Upcoming programs:

For families: Dig & Create is a free drop-in program on select Sundays: October 25, November 8, and December 20. Kids excavate replicas, magnify details, and sketch their finds in their own archaeologist notebooks, then move into art-making.

For PreK–12 educators: Unearthing the Ancient World, on October 29 from 4 to 6 pm, introduces the archaeological process. Educators view original ancient artifacts, excavate in the dig, and make a mosaic or clay artifact in the Museum’s art studio.

Learn more and register:

PreK-12 educators are invited to experience the Jewish Museum’s new simulated archaeological dig! Learn about the archaeological process and discover what artifacts can teach us about how groups of people lived, worked, and interacted in ancient times. View original ancient artifacts, excavate rep...

10/07/2026

The Mourner's Kaddish is a prayer that Jewish people recite to honor the memory of loved ones who have passed away. It is shared out loud in the presence of community, and in saying it, personal grief and collective loss sit side by side.

Today marks three years since October 7, 2023, we hold the pain and terror of the day, the people who were killed, and everyone who grieves.

At the Jewish Museum, memory lives in objects and material culture. Pictured here is the Esslingen Mahzor, a High Holiday prayer book completed in 1290, open to the words of Half Kaddish, a communal recitation amid personal prayer. The same words begin the Mourner's Kaddish. On view in "Sacred Splendor," this object and other medieval Jewish-owned objects from hoards buried during periods of persecution and hidden for centuries, carry the memory of the communities who held them, and show what art makes possible. Remembrance, perseverance, and continuity.

On view in "Sacred Splendor: Jewish Ritual Art and Christian Treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague" at the Jewish Museum, NY, September 18, 2026–February 7, 2027. Photo by Kris Graves

10/05/2026

Hidden for survival and preserved by chance, silver, coins, and jewelry, such as the objects of the Erfurt Treasure, are tangible traces of lives shattered by persecution. Buried by affluent Jewish families amid widespread attacks and expulsions, they bear witness to the resilience of medieval Jewish communities across Central Europe.

Unlike Christian treasures, such as the reliquaries from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague that were protected by the Church for centuries, the Jewish-owned hoards survived through concealment. These items were recovered centuries later, usually as fragments during modern-day urban reconstruction.

Objects from the Erfurt Treasure, normally housed at the Old Synagogue in Erfurt, include six garment clasps and a silver bowl.

📷 Installation view of "Sacred Splendor: Jewish Ritual Art and Christian Treasures from St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague" at the Jewish Museum, NY, September 18, 2026–February 7, 2027. Photo by Kris Graves

10/01/2026

See what's happening this month at the Jewish Museum!

🔗 In bio to browse the full program calendar and plan your visit.

09/30/2026

No eating in the galleries (unless you ate like this).

Visit The Jewish Museum in New York City and Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.

09/28/2026

Alison Rossiter (b. 1953; Jackson, MS) is a contemporary master of cameraless photography. She creates abstract compositions by developing and combining vintage photo papers from her vast archive. Because the papers have, over time, been inadvertently exposed to imperceptible amounts of light before Rossiter’s interventions, the resulting images are haunting and unpredictable. Ultimately, she arranges them in ways that often pay homage to key moments in the history of photography and art.

"Semblance, Man Ray Tapestry (1)," a new addition to the Museum's collection, is part of Rossiter’s recent meditation on "Tapestry," 1911, an asymmetrically checkered textile by Man Ray, which she first encountered at the Jewish Museum in the exhibition "alias Man Ray" in 2009. This acquisition honors the legacy of a significant Jewish avant-garde artist, as well as the Museum’s institutional history of presenting landmark exhibitions that have a wide-ranging impact on the field.

🖼️ Alison Rossiter, "Semblance, Man Ray Tapestry (1)," 2025. Purchase: Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund in honor of Mason Klein, Curator of the Jewish Museum from 1999 to 2026
📷 Installation view of the exhibition "alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention," November 15, 2009 – March 14, 2010. Curated by Mason Klein, the Jewish Museum, New York. Photo: Richard Goodbody

09/25/2026

Artist Mel Bochner (1940–2025) reflects on "The Joys of Yiddish" (2012), a work in the Jewish Museum collection. He talks about his relationship to the Yiddish language, to Jewish identity, and to the Jewish Museum itself, a history that goes back decades.

The full Object Lesson is available on Voices of the Jewish Museum, our Substack. Subscribe for more artist stories. https://thejewishmuseum.substack.com/p/my-name-is-mel-bochner-im-a-painter

"The Joys of Yiddish" is on view in "Identity, Culture, and Community: Stories from the Collection of the Jewish Museum."

🎨 Mel Bochner, "The Joys of Yiddish," 2012. Oil and acrylic on canvas, 100 × 85 in. (254 × 215.9 cm). The Jewish Museum, New York. Purchase: Gifts of The Muriel and William Rand Collection, by exchange and Hyman and Joan C. Sall, 2012-22a-b. 📷 Photos: Will Ragozzino/Scott Rudd Events

09/23/2026

How do artists work with materials? Use your hands to explore these touchable objects on the Museum’s fourth floor. The display has three sections, and each piece has an audio description available in our digital guide on Bloomberg Connects.

09/22/2026

Summer lovin had me a blast

📷 Arthur Leipzig, "Coney Island Lovers," 1943. Gift of Joel Meyerowitz, 2016-152 © Estate of Arthur Leipzig, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York.

09/20/2026

Today, we're sharing 's "Baseball (Sandy Koufax)." Appropriating Andy Warhol's style of commodified repetition, Kass inserts her own (Jewish) stars into the canon of celebrity portraiture.

As a pitcher for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers, Koufax became a source of pride to postwar American Jews. In 1965, he proclaimed his faith by sitting out the first game of the World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur begins at sundown tonight. To those who observe, we wish you a meaningful fast and a g'mar chatima tova.

🖼️ Deborah Kass, "Baseball (Sandy Koufax)," 1996