David Berg Foundation Underwrites Free Saturdays at the Jewish Museum

New York’s Jewish Museum has received a one-year grant of $275,000 from The David Berg Foundation to underwrite Free Saturdays at the Museum and an expanded evaluation and assessment process.

Since its inception in 2006, the Free Saturdays program has brought over 328,000 visitors to the Museum.

The David Berg Foundation grant will allow the Museum to implement an expanded formal evaluation and assessment process beyond the basic information about Free Saturdays’ visitors the Museum routinely tracks. Information derived from the surveys will identify visitation patterns, visitor demographics, and best practices, and will be analyzed to help inform the program’s evolution and expansion.

Over the next year, the Jewish Museum plans to launch a Free Saturdays outreach campaign targeted at younger and more diverse audiences, identify ways to deepen engagement with first-time visitors, and introduce special Shabbat-related programming. Upcoming exhibitions include: The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film; Unorthodox; Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History; and Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist.

The Jewish Museum is open from 11am to 5:45pm on Saturdays. To observe Shabbat, no money is exchanged, and the shops and café are closed. Exhibitions are available on a self-guided basis. There are no guided tours, audio guides, or interactive computers. Visitors may choose to download an audio guide app for smartphones. A Shabbat elevator stops automatically on each floor and comment books are removed to discourage writing in the galleries. Additionally, the children’s exhibition is closed as its displays are interactive.