The Jewish Museum London has been given a £1m funding boost by the UK government which will help the institution develop plans for a new permanent home in the capital. Lisa Nandy, the UK’s culture secretary, announced the cash injection at the launch last week of Two Rooms, the museum’s interim exhibition space at the JW3 venue on Finchley Road in north London.
“Two Rooms is a small, temporary space, a kind of testing ground for ideas and exhibitions, until they find a new, permanent home, scheduled to open by 2030,” said a museum spokesperson. The funding will also support the museum's ongoing audience development and outreach work.
Two new exhibitions drawn have opened in the interim space: Legacy: The Story of the Jewish Family who Founded J. Lyons and Fed Britain and Tree of Life: Stories from Jewish Museum London’s Collection (until 18 October).
The museum’s Camden Town site closed in July 2023 due to financial pressures and the site was eventually sold. In a press statement, the museum said it was facing “unanticipated rising costs” and ultimately needed to become “more sustainable into the future”. The museum had also experienced an earlier period of “financial crisis” in 2019, prompting a review of its donor-dependent business model.
The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has also awarded £100,000 to Manchester Jewish Museum to support its community outreach work.
According to Museums Journal, the DCMS’ investment in museums came out of discussions with Jewish leaders following a Downing Street summit on antisemitism last month. At the Two Rooms launch, which took place as the first Jewish Cultural Month was ending, Nandy referenced the recent spate of antisemitic attacks in the UK.
“We're gathering at a time, frankly, where in every corner of our country we're seeing the ties that bind us fraying, and nowhere is this more apparent than the appalling attacks we've seen on the Jewish community,” Nandy is quoted as saying in Museums Journal.
The culture secretary told the Jewish Chroniclemeanwhile: “One of the things that really strikes me when talking to young people in the UK growing up today is that many young people won't have come into contact with a member of the Jewish community or won't know that they have.”
The government is also working with Arts Council England on an independent audit of its processes for handling antisemitism.