The Jewish Museum in Budapest reopens April 9 with a revamped exhibit marking its 100th anniversary.
The exhibit is called “100 Years – 100 Objects” and includes ritual objects, photographs, textiles, artwork, and more. You can see a list of all 100 items HERE — click the name of the object to see a description of it, plus its history and when it was donated to the museum.
The exhibition shows the development of the museum’s collection through one hundred objects in honor of the centenary. Each and every object displayed has its own individual and special story, but looking at them and interpreting them as a whole, we can get to know almost every layer of the history and culture of the Jews in Hungary. Our ancestors left us all this as a legacy, as values to be preserved and handed on, so that while studying them we can also strengthen and reinterpret our own situation.
The museum originally opened in January 1916 in a private apartment; at that time its collection already included nearly 1,500 objects.
Today the Museum occupies a wing of the Dohany st. synagogue complex that was built for it in the 1930s — on the site of the house where Theodore Herzl was born.
Its old exhibit had been in place there for decades — a traditional display of objects in glass cases, with a heavy focus on ritual items and little information as to the history or contexts of the objects.
In March, before the old exhibit was dismantled and the new one installed, the museum had a rather sentimental open house to allow visitors to “say farewell” to the old display…and view the familiar showcases for the last time.