Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Jewish art and history museum at University of California, Berkeley, United States.
The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life occupies a former printing plant at 2121 Allston Way in downtown Berkeley, renovated by Pfau Long Architects. Its holdings exceed 45,000 artworks, artifacts, photographs and manuscripts, catalogued as Archives, Library and Museum. The museum galleries cover Jewish Art and Jewish Life, while the archives are held at the Bancroft Library.
The collection was founded in 1961 and moved to the University of California, Berkeley in 2010, reopening there in 2012. The transfer to an academic institution expanded its role in research and public display.
The museum's Jewish Life holdings gather objects of personal and family ritual, synagogue and communal life, and records of interaction between Jewish and host communities across the diaspora. The Fromers salvaged Yiddish LP records from dumpsters and collected Yiddish book libraries from Jewish chicken farmers in Petaluma, California.
The museum occupies a former printing plant at 2121 Allston Way in downtown Berkeley, renovated by Pfau Long Architects of San Francisco with custom case work by Pacassa Studios of Oakland. Archival holdings are kept separately at the Bancroft Library on the UC Berkeley campus, so researchers should plan for two locations.
The collection ranks among the three largest collections of Jewish cultural artifacts in the United States and sits within a university research environment. This setting lets visitors encounter ongoing scholarship and exhibition projects from the institution.
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