AJM’s Kevin Sumption on the museum’s future

Michael Visontay, Out and proud: inside Sydney Jewish Museum’s planned redevelopment, The Jewish Independent, 16 December 2024

The Museum hopes to the double numbers of visitors with its new Centre of Contemporary Jewish Life.

“Right now, you could walk straight past the Sydney Jewish Museum on Darlinghurst Road and not know it’s there,” says Kevin Sumption, the museum’s chief executive.

No-one will be able to make that mistake when the SJM’s redevelopment is complete in two years’ time. The frontage will be doubled, with a completely redesigned facade to herald a new Centre of Contemporary Jewish Life as the centrepiece of the project.

“The museum will be out and proud,” Sumption observes with characteristic understatement.

Over the next two years the SJM will be reimagined and enlarged from a modest Holocaust-based institution into a multi-focussed centre for Jewish life and culture. The Centre of Contemporary Jewish Life will be built in the adjacent Maccabean Hall building, whose current occupants – including the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the Jewish Communal Appeal and the Australian Jewish Historical Society – will move out and find new premises.

The new centre will shine a spotlight on Jewish contributions to art, commerce, culture, food and film in an Australian context. It will feature a permanent exhibition, Jewish Contributions: Standing on the shoulders of giants, and a dynamic schedule of exhibitions from other leading Jewish museums around the world, which is a feature of how other prominent museums and galleries operate.

The educational resources and scope of the existing Holocaust museum will be strengthened, with expanded research facilities and increased access to archives in the US and Israel, and new family research services. This will be in addition to its use of interactive technology – Hologram interviews with six survivors – a program designed to address the passing of living witnesses, who have formed the bulk of the museum’s volunteers since it opened in 1992.

Sumption says the museum aims to almost double the number of overall visitors by 2032: from 55,000 to 100,000, and double the number of students in the same period to 55,000.

When the new complex – still named the Sydney Jewish Museum – has its official opening in early 2027, Sumption believes it will move into the top tier of Jewish museums in the world. “We will see ourselves move up the charts and put Sydney in the top half a dozen Jewish museums in the world, particularly in terms of education numbers,” Sumption tells The Jewish Independent.

We will see ourselves move up the charts and put Sydney in the top half a dozen Jewish museums in the world.

Kevin Sumption, Chief Executive of the SJM

“We are at a heart an education institution and will always be so. This redevelopment will allow us to increase our education impact, particularly post-October 7.” The importance of the museum’s educational role was highlighted last week when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledged $8.5 million towards boosting its educational capabilities in the redevelopment, following the spate of attacks in Melbourne and Sydney.

In the meantime, over the next two years, the museum’s educational program will continue but public events will be severely curtailed, especially for the first six months, after which their viability will be reviewed.

The planning around this project started in 2022, when the museum turned 30. “We were founded in 1992 by Holocaust survivors. When I joined three years ago, the board had the insight to say, ‘what does the next 30 years offer?’

There was a very strong appetite for Sydneysiders to learn more about Jewish history, traditions and culture.

Kevin Sumption

“We recognised that we are at capacity. We had to expand, and what would that expansion look like? The decision was made to expand our Holocaust storytelling. But just as importantly, to start looking at a different set of stories, to look at a 4000-year set of stories with a very strong focus on Jewish presence and contributions in Australia.

“The research was telling us that there was a very strong appetite for Sydneysiders, most of whom are not from the Jewish community, to learn more about Jewish history, traditions, culture, as well as the Holocaust – particularly the contributions of Jewish Australia, Jewish Australians to the development of modern Australia.”

Sumption says there were two main drivers behind the direction of the expansion.

One was the need to be financially self-sufficient, which could be achieved by increasing the number of visitors. The new focus on contemporary Jewish life, and the expanded horizon of exhibition themes will not only expand the museum’s footprint but drive more visitors. “If we reach 100,000 a year by 2032, that gives us new income generating opportunities.”

Another important driver lies in the Holocaust studies history curriculum, Years 7-10. “Currently, it’s almost compulsory in New South Wales. It’s not quite compulsory to study Holocaust studies. A teacher has to choose either World War 1 or 2. If they pick WW1, you don’t study the Holocaust. That is going to change.

“The state government has changed the curriculum. From 2027 students will study both World War One and World War Two. And there are compulsory components about the Holocaust and particularly how it impacted Australia. There’s a study unit in there, for instance, that looks specifically at survivors who made Australia home.

“So that is very likely to increase the number of students and teachers who’ll be seeking out the museum to come and do those components of the history curriculum as well.”

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

There will be two features of the expanded educational program. The first is that the three interactive Hologram interviews the museum previously recorded with survivors will be expanded to six, and have their own bespoke gallery. Sumption says the interviews already done with prominent guides such as Eddie Jaku and Olga Horak has proved successful beyond his expectations.

“Students have grown up with [the technology], so they’re comfortable with the idea. We’re talking ten-year-olds. But more interestingly, they were asking questions that we were almost certain they wouldn’t ask. Because it was technology and not a person, the students were going places that they wouldn’t ask Olga, the person.”

Sumption puts it down to an underlying comfort and familiarity with the technology. “That was quite an eye-opener for us. I was surprised to see how effective this actually was.” The average attention span for an interactive exhibit is two minutes, he adds. “You’re doing really well if you can hold someone for three minutes. The average engagement for the three interactive testimonies we did in (the opening Hologram exhibition) Reverberations in 2022 was 30 minutes. They were going deeper and they were engaged.”

Visitors at the Reverberations exhibition.

The second feature of the education program will be expanded family research and Holocaust research facilities. “We will have increased access to the Shoah Foundation digital archive of about 15,000 recorded testimonies, we hope to access some of the databases of the National Library of Israel. We will have more databases and research for people to come in and learn more about their family, in particular, as it relates to the Holocaust.”

ANTISEMITISM AND RACISM

Sumption says the museum will also have an expanded focus on contemporary antisemitism and racism, and he is quick to add that this process began before October 7. “There’s been substantial discussions about what now has to change. For instance, in our expanded education facilities, there will be a brand-new program about fighting contemporary antisemitism.

“We are about what it is to be a good citizen, to be an upstander, what it is to call out hatred, racism, those kinds of things. That is the heart of what the education team does, and that’s what the government wants us to do more of (which is why it allocated $8.5 million funding to the project). And hence why the same government is also making Holocaust Studies compulsory. So we’re really very well placed to respond to October 7.”

One of the major learnings has been to appreciate how central Israel is to many parts of the community.

In turn, Sumption says there will be a great engagement with the role and centrality of Israel to Australian Jews. “One of the major learnings for me and my team has been to appreciate how central Israel is to many parts of the community, and how that is not understood by many Sydneysiders, and it needs to be explained carefully.”

But there will there be any reference, direct or indirect, to the war in Gaza that was sparked by October 7? “Our education programming does that already,” he says, “but history has a long lens and to reflect on that conflict right now, as a historical institution, is really difficult to do.

“It will be interesting to ask me that question in 2027.”

One aspect of the war that can’t be avoided, however, is the weaponisation of language, in particular Zionism and genocide. Sumption says the museum has considered this issue. “Language forms a large part of most of the education programs w deliver, because invariably, people ask, ‘what is a Zionist, and how has this word changed in the last 12 months?’

“Our education team is well equipped to be able to talk about that as well as ‘what is a genocide? What’s the definition of a genocide? Is this a genocide? Is this not?’ Our team of educators are able to take difficult subjects like that and give people some insight into how language should and shouldn’t be used.

“We’re also a subscriber to the IHRA definition of antisemitism, so we’re very careful in making sure that we align with the definition as well.”

Sumption is thinking big and but he also knows that success depends on getting the small things right. There’s a lot to look forward to.