The year was 1996, Atlanta was hosting the Centennial Olympic Games, and there was a new Jewish museum in Midtown.
Nearly 30 years later, The Breman is getting a new look with a bold new logo and more programming to showcase the richness of Jewish culture.
It was businessman William Breman’s dream years earlier to establish a Jewish museum in Atlanta, preserving the history of individuals and the whole community. With a generous donation to the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum opened in 1996 at the Selig Center, connecting the two organizations.
Now known as The Breman, the museum has recently completed a two-year cycle to rebrand itself to better represent the Atlanta Jewish community, according to Executive Director Leslie Gordon.
The nonprofit multicultural center focuses on exhibitions, arts and cultural programming, archives, and Holocaust education. The archives include an extensive collection of maps, posters, books, films, periodicals, directories, and oral histories.
Current exhibitions include:
- “History with Chutzpah: Remarkable Stories of the Southern Jewish Experience” tells the stories of Georgia and Alabama Jews through hundreds of documents, photographs, and oral histories.
- “From Light to Light: The Jewish Weekly Holiday of Shabbat” is a visual exploration of the elements of Shabbat from lighting candles to sharing challah bread.
- “Absence of Humanity” is a permanent collection on Atlanta-area survivors of the Holocaust.
- The life of Ruth-Marion Baruch is a retrospective photography display.
More than just a museum, Jazz artist Joe Alterman is a regular at Breman events and the Historic Jewish Atlanta Cemetery Tour is sold out. Coming up on May 5, The Breman is cosponsoring a Yom HaShoah commemoration at the Memorial to the Six Million at Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta. A tribute to Irving Berlin is kicking off summer programming.
For more information about the museum, visit the website.
