National Museum Of American Jewish History CEO Resigns
Exterior of the National Museum of Jewish History in Philadelphia. Image by Getty/Paul Marotta/Contributor
By PJ Grisar May 21, 2019
Ivy L. Barsky, the chief executive of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia, has resigned. She will leave the institution in June, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Barsky was named CEO in 2012, two years after the museum opened a new $150 million building. (The museum, founded in 1976, was historically housed in the same building as the city’s Congregation Mikveh Israel.) At the start of her tenure, the museum was struggling to attract sufficient crowds to keep up with its increasing expenses.
To cut costs, Barsky executed layoffs, rearranged departments and put forward a strategic plan that emphasized high profile programming, resulting in major exhibitions on, among other subjects, Leonard Bernstein, the photography of Richard Avedon and the role of baseball in American Jewish life.
In 2017, with yearly losses mounting, Barsky conducted another round of layoffs, froze salaries, closed the museum’s café and took a cut of $25,000 from her previous salary of $324,000.
Barsky claimed at the time that the cuts would save the museum $1.3 million annually. That fiscal year, the institution saw a $1.8 million deficit.
Despite the cuts, Barsky had a strong vision for the museum. During her tenure, she supervised the creation of a curriculum for Jewish American history using the museum’s collection; that curriculum was taught to Jewish educators through seminars via another Barsky initiative, the museum’s National Educators Institute.
In a statement, Barsky said it was “a great privilege” to lead the museum. She did not announce her future plans.
PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected]
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Dive In
-
Art How a Lower East Side Jew conquered the multiverse
-
Art Why Queen Esther was the star in the age of Rembrandt’s Amsterdam
-
Art Vandals destroyed his tribute to Holocaust survivors — and yet this artist persists
-
Art This pioneering female artist’s Jewish heritage is no longer a secret — but what about the rest of her life?
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Why the Antisemitism Awareness Act now has a religious liberty clause to protect ‘Jews killed Jesus’ statements
- 2
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 3
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 4
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
In Case You Missed It
-
Art How a Lower East Side Jew conquered the multiverse
-
Fast Forward Right-wing activists riot outside Israeli-Palestinian memorial event at Reform synagogue in Israel
-
Fast Forward Trump fires Doug Emhoff from Holocaust Memorial Council
-
Fast Forward Facing police investigation, Irish band Kneecap denies supporting Hamas, Hezbollah
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.