Students and their chaperones explore Chose Food: Cuisine, Culture, and American Jewish Identity, an NEH-funded exhibition. Image courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
The Jewish Museum of Maryland explores the American Jewish experience through exhibitions and public programming. Permanent exhibitions on the Lloyd Street Synagogue and East Baltimore’s Lombard Street tell the story of Jewish life in the museum’s home city and state. Funding from the NEH helped the museum develop exhibitions on Jewish history during its first decades and has since enabled it to expand its scope through exhibitions on vacation, food, and medicine.
“Visitors spent a long time in the exhibit, reading most of the panels. They said that they learned new things about Jews and medicine and questioned some of their assumptions.”
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Students explore an interactive exhibit in Beyond Chicken Soup at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Image courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
Students explore Beyond Chicken Soup: Jews and Medicine in America. Image courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture, and American Jewish Identity and Beyond Chicken Soup: Jews and Medicine in America, the museum’s two most recent NEH-funded exhibitions, were designed to travel the country in addition to being displayed in Baltimore. Both brought new supporters and new audiences to the museum. “Beyond Chicken Soup,” in particular, was supported by a number of the region’s medical institutions, including LifeBridge Health, which operates Baltimore’s Sinai Hospital. Deborah Cardin, Deputy Director for Programs and Development, notes that “visitors spent a long time in the exhibit, reading most of the panels. They said that they learned new things about Jews and medicine and questioned some of their assumptions.” For the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the impact of these grants has lasted far beyond the exhibition display, helping it develop a national reputation and build partnerships across the country.
Students engage with an interactive installation, part of Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture, and American Jewish Identity. Image courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Maryland.
Students from Baltimore City Schools—most of whom are not Jewish—attended these exhibitions and museum staff developed corresponding public programs that would invite people of other backgrounds to examine their own experiences in light of Jewish history and culture. For Chosen Food, programs included talks by food historians, cooking demonstrations, and a “Gefilte Fish Throwdown,” or cooking contest. Beyond Chicken Soup offered the museum the opportunity to engage in science education and delve into questions of health care access. At family days, medical practitioners encouraged children to consider careers in medical professions.
