JMM Insights: Sunrise, Sunset Edition
Were you a June bride or groom? How about July or August? Well next June we’ll be opening an exhibit to celebrate weddings from all parts of the Jewish community and every month of the year. And you can be a part of the celebration!
On June 18th, 2017, the JMM will open “Just Married! Wedding Stories from Jewish Maryland,” an original exhibition that exploring the many different ways our community has tied the knot from the 19th century through today. We look at many of the ways that couples combine family, religion, fashion, and tradition to make their ceremony meaningful and personal?
The JMM collections are home to a treasure trove of wedding stories. These stories are told by artifacts, images, and documents, both secular and religious, expected and unexpected: wedding gowns, ketubahs, albums, invitations, gifts, speeches, chuppahs, souvenirs, and more that have been entrusted to us by Jewish Marylanders since the museum was founded.
We can create a rich exhibit out of what we already hold. Just in the first few months of research, we’ve already discovered that many of our treasures are, indeed, treasures: a handwritten invitation in German, from 1841. Baltimore ketubahs that predate the building of the Lloyd Street Synagogue. Formal photographs that show the breadth of options available to, and choices made by, Maryland couples.
But Joanna Church and this summer’s great team of interns aren’t stopping there.
Our collections are particularly strong when it comes to Baltimore in the decades between 1890 and 1950 – but now we’re turning to you, our members, friends and volunteers to help us flesh out the stories of a diverse Jewish community all across Maryland over the past sixty years.
If you’re interested in donating or lending your family wedding stories for display in the Feldman Gallery, let us know! We have some fantastic wedding gowns from the 1900s-1930s but we’re looking for dresses and other textiles from the decades before and after. We’re particularly looking for modern-day material capturing the breadth of our community, from the ultra-traditional to the newly created; we’re looking for weddings of all stripes – maybe even polka dots. For more information, or to discuss potential donations and loans, please contact Joanna Church, Collections Manager, at jchurch@jewishmuseummd.org or 443-873-5176.
In a few weeks we’ll kick off of our official collecting initiative, in which we’ll ask people across the state to contribute an invitation and a photo from their weddings (and their parents’ weddings and their grandparents’ weddings); the results will be incorporated into a companion exhibit on our website. So start pulling out your albums and finding your favorite photos now!
This summer we’ve gone “beyond chicken soup”, next summer we’ll get beyond “Sunrise, Sunset”… who knows how far we can go?