The Jewish Museum of Maryland reopened its doors on Feb. 2 after more than a year and a half of renovations designed to push the museum forward into the modern age and cement its status as a home for the history of Jewish Baltimore.
The redesigned spaces within the museum have several new exhibits showcasing a wide range of Baltimore Jewish history, a new audio and video production studio, rotating space in the galleries and a new 16-by-9-foot video display.
“I think ‘renovation’ is maybe downplaying the track we’re on,” said Sol Davis, the executive director of the museum. “We’re using the language of transformation. It’s really a transformational moment for the museum, and I like to situate it in terms of its larger evolution from a historical society.”
Davis explained that the museum is the successor organization to the Jewish Historical Society of Maryand, which existed from 1960 to 1998, and that since that organizational transition there’s been a desire to expand.
Davis said he took the executive director position in 2021, a time when museum work was undergoing a massive shift due to the pandemic.
He added there was a push for museums to turn toward digital content and galleries. They had been working on a long-term investment into the building that positioned them to make these changes and be a “post-pandemic museum.”
One of the highlights of the modernization effort is at the front of house with the new David M. Rubenstein Exhibition Arcade, which provides a range of immersive Jewish experiences with artifact displays and interactive technologies.
“The word ‘arcade’ for some people means where you go play video games. But the architects pulled that language from late 19th-century European architecture, specifically the arcades of Paris, which are spaces of exploration and leisure and places where you go have an intimate experience with something to learn more about it,” Davis said.
The arcade takes the first part of its name from the new Baltimore Orioles billionaire owner, a native Jewish Baltimorean who donated $1.5 million to the museum in September 2024.
Davis told the Baltimore Jewish Times when the donation was announced that the money would help bring the full revitalization to fruition.
The arcade used the preexisting architecture of the building in a reimagined way, using brick arches built all over the space as the basis for the exhibits within their now-expanded structure.
“These archways, they’re on the facade of the building. They’re built architecturally throughout the whole building. And throughout the neighborhood and in Baltimore City, you just see this motif of an archway. The architects really picked up on that,” Davis said.
Davis said one of the main goals of the redesign process was to create a “participatory museum” that includes photo collection campaigns, recorded family histories in the video production room and more.
“By that we mean really inviting all Jewish Marylanders to join in on this great project of telling the story of the Jewish Maryland experience, which is very multifaceted, diverse and deep. We want to invite the public to join us in telling the story,” Davis said. “What it does is expand the perspectives that are being shared. It’s not really coming from a singular institutional, authoritative voice anymore. In the museum field, it’s called polyvocal: bringing many voices into telling the story together.”
The museum brought two new exhibitions to the public on opening day: “Next Generations” and “To Say I Was Here.”
The museum has also added several new elements to its online presence, including a new website launched several days before the reopening to compliment the changes to the physical space.
“During the building closure we went through a whole rebranding process. And so now we have a whole kind of visual vocabulary, a new logo and a fresh color palette that also aligns with the freshness of the physical spaces,” Davis said.
Davis said museum leaders will work to add a new core exhibit throughout the first year or two after the reopening. These exhibits are major projects that remain on display for 10 to 15 years. Davis added that the museum is looking to incorporate its historic location, between Lloyd Street Synagogue and B’nai Israel Synagogue, into its plans for the future.
Looking toward that future, Davis said these changes were done in the hope of bringing more people to the museum and producing a higher-quality historical experience for future generations.
“The museum has historically drawn about 20,000 visitors a year. We’re hoping within the first couple of years of reopening to increase that by 50% or so,” Davis said.
