Image © Andrea Jemolo
New York, USA 2025
When you enter the Jewish Museum you begin a journey that spans centuries and continents. It is a journey that explores lifetimes of Jewish history and culture, telling stories and connecting the lines thru ancient artifacts to contemporary art.
Housed in the former Felix M. Warburg House, a Gothic Revival-style mansion built between 1906 and 1908, it is the oldest surviving Jewish museum in the world and the first in the USA. Its collections comprise over 30,000 objects, making it the largest collection of Jewish art and culture outside of Israel.
Units
1
Length of exhibit fronts
7
Display Exhibition Designer
Museum architects and UNS with Method Design
Recently the Museum has embarked on a program of reimagined, renovated and expanded public spaces on its third and fourth floors. The latter galleries now offer the public fresh settings in which to experience art and objects from the collections used by the Museum’s Teaching and Learning Center.
The Museum’s prized collection of Hanukkah lamps is the largest in the world. Comprising more than a thousand pieces, it spans the Renaissance to the 21st century. The lamps are from many different places, made from a wide variety of materials, using different techniques. And of course they often have remarkable stories of their own to tell.
One such example is the lamp made by sculptor and architect Arnold Zadikow. This rare example of Jewish ceremonial art created during the Holocaust was hidden in camp-ghetto Theresienstadt, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, and used in secrecy during holidays. Tragically, Zadikow died at Theresienstadt, but his lamp survived. It was found in the camp following the end of the Second World War in 1945.
In 2024, Goppion was commissioned to create a new showcase for a special display of Hanukkah lamps selected from the collection. Each item is a demonstration of the diverse aesthetic tastes and economic circumstances of Jews over the ages, but all of them are unified by a common purpose: to celebrate Hanukkah in the most beautiful way possible.
Image © Andrea Jemolo
“Goppion’s display case for 130 Chanukah lamps from the Jewish Museum’s extensive collection of more than 1,000 examples from around the world and from antiquity to today,” wrote James S. Snyder, the Museum’s Director, “provides a jewel-like backdrop for a story that illustrates and illuminates the Museum’s narrative of 3,500 years of Jewish culture in the global diaspora. It is also a centerpiece for the Museum’s new Teaching and Learning Center, supporting the Museum’s initiative to demonstrate new ways for using its collections to educate all of its audiences in meaningful ways.”
Our solution for this extensive display was to create a large free-standing showcase with 13 hinged doors. Double-sided and more than 52 feet long, it consists of 13 contiguous single-volume modules. The design also had to consider the showcase’s additional role as part of the building’s interior architecture, as it also serves as a partition facing an atrium. The west side of the showcase is integrated with a glass wall nearly 21 feet long, which allows views of the spaces below. An additional challenge was finding a way to visually reinforce continuity of the ceiling design above.
“Studio Goppion is surely the most accomplished—and most aesthetically sensitive—exhibition display case designer and fabricator working today,” Snyder added.
Image © Andrea Jemolo
Key to the successful delivery of this project was the close working relationship between Goppion, the Museum's team, exhibition designers and architects. The new building project was designed by UNS (United Network Studio), Amsterdam, and New Affiliates Architecture, New York, with Method Design, New York.
The Jewish Museum welcomed the idea of an engineering design assist process and of creating a prototype, modified at two different stages. This allowed desired solutions for the installation’s various complexities to be addressed and resolved through the prototyping process.
The resulting exhibit anchors the experience and beautifully illustrates the central meaning of light in Jewish life. By extension, the exhibit is a memorable expression of the Museum’s reimagined spaces as a vital part of the visitor experience. The Jewish Museum continues to be a meeting place for expression, learning, and the exchange of ideas, as much needed today as ever.
Image © Andrea Jemolo