(JHE) — The Jewish Museum in London is closing its physical premises indefinitely due to heavy financial losses made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic.
It hopes to sell the building — a Grade II listed Georgian town house linked to a refurbished factory in the city’s Camden Town district — to raise funds to maintain collections and look for another site.
In an announcement Thursday, the museum trustees said it would close at the end of July. Its collections will be put into specialised storage. It will retain an online presence, however. No time frame was given.
Despite receiving an Arts Council grant of £224,000 in 2022, the announcement said, “as with many similar institutions, Jewish Museum London has also faced unanticipated rising costs, which has prevented its return to producing temporary exhibitions. The board’s decision also reflects the need to make the museum more sustainable into the future.”
The museum had closed for 15 months during the pandemic, but had not recovered visitors or income after reopening in July 2021.
The announcement did not go into specifics, but the Jewish Chronicle reported that “even before the pandemic, Charity Commission records show the museum’s expenditure was outstripping its income from donors, visitors and grants by up to £500,000 a year.”
Is said, in an article by David Rose, that:
In the year to March 2022, the last for which accounts have been published, its revenue was down to £820,000 — just over a third of pre-Covid level.
“Our decision to sell the current building is not taken lightly, but as trustees it’s our responsibility to consider the longer–term sustainability of the museum,” Museum Chair Nick Viner said in the Museum’s announcement. “As the collection leaves Albert Street for a new temporary home, it will also create opportunities to experiment, as we develop the new vision for Jewish Museum London together with all our stakeholders.”
The Museum was founded in 1932 and moved to the town house in Camden Town in 1994. In 1995 it merged with the London Museum of Jewish Life (founded in 1983 as the Museum of the Jewish East End). The combined museum operated on two sites for more than a decade, until the Camden Town site was expanded and remodelled after acquiring a former piano factory behind the town house. This reopened to the public in 2010.
Read the Jewish Chronicle article
2 comments on “UK: Jewish Museum London closing indefinitely due to financial losses”
It’s so sad to hear about the closing of the Jewish Museum in London.
We visited the museum twelve years ago and really enjoyed it; all of the employees were very pleasant and we also had a delicious lunch in the café. Re: the financial repercussions of covid, the museum was closed for sixteen months and certainly that heavily-affected their already-worsening financial situation.