Following its inception in 1962, the former Judah L.
Magnes Museum collected and now reside permanently at The Magnes are the bearers
distinguished itself by directing its collecting efforts beyond the focus
on European Jewish culture and history that was prevalent among
American Jewish museums at the time. During the 1970s and 1980s, its
founders, Seymour and Rebecca Fromer, actively corralled an informal
team of activist collectors and supporters. Together, they were able
to bring to Berkeley art and material culture from North Africa, the
Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. Their legendary rescue
missionscollecting trips aimed at retrieving Jewish cultural objects
in locations where Jews had once thrivedwere further complemented
by careful acquisitions carried out by exploring the catalogs of major
and lesser-known auction houses, and especially by visiting art dealers
in Israel, where many Jews from the lands of Islam had resettled.
These collecting patterns are particularly evident in the case of the
stunning holdings that document the history and memory of Jewish
communities in Morocco. The Fromers and their rescue mission
teams visited tourist shops near and far across the Moroccan centers
where Jews once lived: Ttouan, Tangier, Casablanca, Fez, and
Marrakech, and made their way into the remote locations of the Atlas
mountains that separate the Mediterranean and Atlantic coastlines
of Morocco from the Sahara desert. The hundreds of ritual objects,
textiles, illustrated marriage contracts, and manuscripts that they
of a narrative that is at once very ancient and extremely modern. Heirs
to a history that harkens back to antiquity, the Jewish communities
of Morocco carry many layers of memory and change, from the rise
of Islam to the expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, the
European colonization of Africa, and the Holocaust. Most Moroccan
Jews abandoned their ancestral home en masse during the 1950s, with
smaller numbers remaining through the 1960s and 70s, relocating
primarily to Israel, France, and North America (especially Francophone
Quebec). What they left behind, along with an important network of
intercultural relations and memories of their ancient presence, included
communal buildings, and, most significantly, many objects. Brought
out of Morocco, these remains display a diaspora within the diaspora,
amuseum of the invisible, the texture of which is preserved in public
and private collections worldwide.
The Invisible Museum project started with a multi-year exploration
of the Moroccan holdings at The Magnes. The resulting exhibition
offers a probing insight into how cultural objectsonce the cherished
belongings of individuals, families, and communitiesmay often be
abandoned in the process of migration or sold by immigrants seeking
torebuild their lives in a new land before they become part of a
museumcollection.
~Francesco Spagnolo