The Breman Museum Hires New Executive Director; Museum Founder Retires
Called a visionary for founding and leading Atlanta’s Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum, Jane Leavey announced last Spring that she was retiring effective Dec. 31, 2011. It took a search committee less than six months to identify Aaron Berger as The Breman’s new executive director. He started on Jan. 3.
“I am excited about the opportunity to follow in Jane’s big footprints,” Berger said.
Berger spent time familiarizing himself with The Breman in the weeks prior to assuming his new role, enabling him to begin formulating ideas to build on Leavey’s legacy.
Berger said he observed that The Breman is actually three organizations: an archives and library used by researchers to explore Southern Jewish life, the Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education, and the museum itself that offers original and traveling exhibits. “Is the museum working effectively to promote all three of those entities?” said Berger. “We have to meet the needs of our community.”
A career in business was Berger’s original goal, but after taking an art history course at the College of Charleston, he switched majors.
“I was fascinated that [the arts] are ways we are transmitting ideas and thoughts,” he said.
He began his museum career as an educator at the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art. When he took over as director, the museum was $350,000 in debt, which Berger eliminated by developing appropriate programs for the community being served. By age 30, Berger was named director of the nationally-accredited Albany (Ga.) Museum of Art, where he again succeeded in developing programs of interest to the community, doubling visitation and museum membership.
In 2006, Berger was tapped by the Atlanta-based non-profit fundraising consulting firm Alexander Haas to head its museum division, and in 2009 he founded Turning Point, a consulting firm that specializes in turn-around strategies for non-profits. In effect, Berger merged his love of the arts world with his interest in the business world. In 2011, he received an MBA from South University in Savannah.
While Berger brings his museum and non-profit strategies expertise to The Breman, he also expects to learn from his association with a Jewish educational institution.
Berger, 40, tells of being raised as ethnically Jewish but not religious. “The Breman is a chance for me to learn as well as to lead, to explore my roots and Jewish identity, to connect with something I haven’t had the opportunity to connect with before,” he said.
He believes his learning curve will enhance The Breman’s offerings. “I told the [museum] board, ‘I represent the segment of the [Jewish] population that identifies as Jewish but isn’t a temple-goer.’ I want to explore programming [that] for the observant is something familiar and for the non-observant [will help them] to understand and grow their knowledge [of Judaism].”
Even though an extensive national search for The Breman’s new executive director was conducted by Boardwalk Consulting, an Atlanta-based executive search firm specializing in non-profits, The Breman’s search committee co-chaired by board members Gail Evans and George Stern determined that the preferred candidate be familiar with the South, according to Evans. Berger, who has lived in Georgia since 1999, met that criterion and others.
“He is a dynamic young leader with deep roots and ties in Georgia,” said Evans. “He has museum experience and fundraising experience and could hit the ground running.”
The midtown Breman Museum that Berger now heads is a far cry from the closet that housed the original archives in the former Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta building on Peachtree Road. The Holocaust Center was in loaned space at the old Jewish Community Center building next door.
The impetus for creating an archive was the 1983 exhibition Jews and Georgians: A Meeting of Cultures, 1733-1983 curated by Leavey, then a JFGA marketing, public relations and special projects specialist, in conjunction with the Jewish Federations national convention being held in Atlanta.
“We found wonderful evidence of the Jewish experience throughout the state,” Leavey said.
The exhibit materials had to be returned to their owners, but Leavey identified the need to create an archive that would preserve the documents, many not properly maintained, associated with the lives of key Atlantans.
The exhibit materials had to be returned to their owners, but Leavey identified the need to create an archive that would preserve the documents, many not properly maintained, associated with the lives of key Atlantans. Leavey also saw the need to preserve the stories of the many Holocaust survivors living in Atlanta.
In 1985, JFGA assisted in funding a Jewish Community Archives, which expanded in 1986 to include a Holocaust Resource Center and exhibition in 1986. Leavey spearheaded a statewide program of Holocaust education for public and private schools across Georgia, and created citywide exhibits and public programs from the stored archival materials.
In 1993, local philanthropist William (Bill) Breman offered the lead gift to permanently house the archives and budding museum in one facility. The museum opened at its current location in 1996.
Leavey is a self-taught museum curator. She minored in art in college and has had a lifelong love of museums.
When the museum first opened, borrowed exhibits from other institutions enhanced the permanent collections Creating Community: The Jews of Atlanta from 1845 to the Present and Absence of Humanity: The Holocaust Years: 1933-1945.
“Then, we had things we wanted to do so we created our own,” said Leavey. “They became traveling exhibits. You spend three years looking for objects; you don’t want to see [the exhibit] gone in three months.”
Breman-curated exhibits that are still traveling to other museums include Where the Wild Things Are: Maurice Sendak in His Own Words and Pictures, Zap! Pow! Bam! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938 - 1950, Seeking Justice: The Leo Frank Case Revisited.
From the beginning, “There was an understanding that, as we put together exhibits, that it would be nice to have a museum and have it be a part of Federation,” said David Sarnat, an Atlanta businessman who was the JFGA executive director when Leavey proposed the original archives project. Today, The Breman is housed in the Selig Center building that is also home to JFGA.
“Jane and the museum staff built it into an entity that the community should be proud of,” Sarnat added. “It’s important how we present ourselves to our [Jewish] community and the broader community. Jane was central to that from the beginning.”
Archivist Sandy Berman has worked alongside Leavey from The Breman’s beginnings.
“She had this concept of creating something that would be a lasting tribute to the Jewish community of Atlanta, and now Georgia and Alabama,” said Berman. “She was a visionary, able to take all of these components and put them into a museum format. She has enriched the community because of her vision of what the museum could be.”
When asked to single out career highlights, Leavey instead talks in broad terms about the very fact of The Breman’s existence, and its significance.
“I don’t know that when I wrote the proposal if I thought I’d ever see a physical place,” she said.
She recalls her then-young son asking her one day, ‘Where is all gone?’ when she told him there were no more cookies. She likens that to The Breman’s role. “We’re preserving the memory of generations of Jews and a lifestyle that doesn’t exist anymore. Jews had a presence in hundreds of cities in the South, and now synagogues are abandoned and [Jewish] names are faded on buildings. The Breman has an incredible collection that reflects Southern Jewish history in Georgia and Alabama. The archives are a public trust.”
Spring Asher, The Breman board’s co-president, had an easier time than Leavey in pointing to individual accomplishments. “[Jane] is a very creative creator of exhibits. They are the jewels in the crown of what she created,” Asher said.
Looking forward, she added, “[Aaron Berger] has been getting his arms around [the museum] and understanding it. He has a real knowledge of running a museum and helping museums grow. We’re very excited.”
For information about The Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum, visit www.thebreman.org.
By Fran Memberg exclusively for www.AtlantaJewishNews.com. Photos provided.
