Today’s choice of visionary (the blog’s theme of the week, remember) is closer to home. It is someone I know well, have known for a long time in a variety of roles, including that of friend, temporary employer, and member of a shared community. It is a person who with singular vision, determination, engagement and insane amounts of work has managed to build a museum in town that has grown from an idea around the kitchen table to a modern, inclusive and smart institution that has finally found a permanent home in the park blocks.

I am, of course, talking about Judy Margles, the director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. Before I turn to photographs of the new place, let me hasten to add that there were many helping hands, planning minds, engaged hearts and open checkbooks that made the transition from hole in the wall to shining flagship possible. I respect all of them, the talented and committed staff in particular, adore some of them and am grateful for a community that pulled through. However, let it be said, pulling teeth is also a term that comes to mind when thinking of the process, or pulling your hair out, when things, years back, faced obstacle after obstacle.

It takes a person with vision to pull it off, but also many other skills. It takes someone with patience, with the ability to persuade people, with a flexibility to change plans when necessary, with imagination regarding the asks, with smartness in choosing personell including curators, with a willingness to take risks where the rest of us would have long chickened out. We did not always see eye-to-eye when I worked at the museum, but I really want to express my boundless admiration for a lifetime work that generated something big, something important and something meaningful.

Hannah Arendt’s case for the Vita Activa included a philosophy of judgment as something that enables political actors to decide on actions in the public realm, on what goals to pursue and what actions, past or present, to praise or blame for their consequences. This is what you DO when you build a museum that ensures remembrance of Jewish history, including the Holocaust, out of practically nothing, investing most of your adult life. This is what Judy did.

 

Photos are of the museum in its new space; for detailed insight here is a link to a fitting review. http://www.orartswatch.org/a-bigger-bolder-jewish-museum/

A bigger, bolder Jewish Museum

The current Bruskin exhibit is wondrous; do yourself a favor and go look at it.

The café will open this week; an auditorium awaits lectures and discussions. The giftstore beckons.

DO GO!

Stumbling blocks, echoing the Stolpersteine you see all over Germany these days, inscribed with the names of those deported and killed, located in front of the houses they lived in.