The Jewish Museum of Maryland announced it has received a gift of $2 million from the Joseph and Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds, funds that will help enhance the museum’s core exhibit gallery and administrative workspaces.
The updates to the exhibitions will include new floors, display frameworks, exhibition cases, lighting and enhanced media offerings. The gift is helping take the museum to new heights, said Sol Davis, the museum’s executive director.
“A gallery’s ambience sets the tone for visitor experience and serves as the stage for content presentation,” Davis said in a Baltimore Jewish Times interview. “An elegant and modern gallery creates a particular kind of environment that supports an elevated presentation of this content and culture that we care deeply about and continuously strive to present with the highest quality.”
Misty Gibson, the Meyerhoff Funds’ deputy director, said that the updates will go together with the museum’s new core exhibit, which will be unveiled next spring.
“The renovations to the Harvey M. Meyerhoff Fund Gallery will provide a bright space to showcase the new core exhibit, ‘Jews at the Crossroads.’ This exhibit is designed to draw both longtime supporters and new audiences with content that is engaging and thought-provoking,” Gibson said.
The Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds and the Jewish Museum of Maryland have a relationship that dates back decades. As a part of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore, the museum is a key cog in the ongoing process to chronicle and preserve Charm City’s Jewish history.
“The Funds’ enduring support of the museum dates to the museum’s predecessor institution, the Jewish Historical Society of Maryland,” Davis said. “That level of abiding commitment to the preservation of Maryland’s Jewish history is a source of tremendous inspiration for our staff and board of directors.”
Gibson seconded this commitment, saying that the grantmaking committee — made up of family members — approved the gift.
“The Fund focuses its giving on projects that strengthen the Jewish community in Israel and Baltimore, along with initiatives that benefit the broader Baltimore community. This grant stands out as a meaningful investment because it supports essential improvements to both public facing and behind the scenes infrastructure,” she said. “The Jewish Museum’s work plays an important role in preserving Jewish history and elevating personal and family narratives, which makes this contribution especially valuable.”
The museum currently has three other exhibits on display: one on modernist art, one that showcases personal family photographs from Maryland Jewish communities, and the last a collection of 73 mezuzahs from around the world, spanning from the late 1700s to the current day.
The new core exhibition and all of its components are scheduled to be completed and opened to the public in April. The updates to the administrative workspace will begin in early 2026. Both of these developments are key to helping improve the museum’s offerings and workflow, Davis said.
For Gibson, the new exhibit and the other improvements will pay dividends toward furthering the Meyerhoff Funds’ larger mission, which encompasses taking care of Jews and Jewish institutions, including ones that promote arts and culture.
“Museum goers can be excited about this grant and the broader campaign because it helps the museum expand and deliver programming that engages and inspires both longtime supporters and new audiences. Gifts like this highlight the vital role museums play in fostering a vibrant, thriving community,” she said.
It’s not always easy being Jewish, especially in the current political climate, but as Davis said, gifts like the Meyerhoff Funds’ show that Jews are not going anywhere.
“Major gifts of this kind signal that even during difficult times, investment in cultural institutions continues, that our work is meaningful and must endure, and that culturally specific museums play a vital role within communities today and into the future,” he said.
