As The Breman celebrates its 30th anniversary this summer, Executive Director Leslie Gordon is stepping down. But she’s not going far – after seven years of engaging, creating, innovating and connecting, Gordon will become a part-time consultant for the cultural center.
“This is a positive thing,” Gordon said. “We’re in a strong place.”
Brought on to expand programming, strengthen financials, and raise The Breman’s profile regionally, nationally, and internationally, Gordon feels she has accomplished what she set out to do.
“This is a great time for the Bremen to decide what it wants to be for the next 30 years, and it’s time for me to focus on what I love: arts and culture,” the Savannah native said.
Under Gordon’s leadership, The Breman has become an organization that’s more broadly recognized for history, culture and the arts rather than a steadfast institution. The Breman has an active and growing archive, a strong oral history program and a Holocaust education program. More people, now than ever before, are coming to The Breman seeking education and partnership.
“We are churning and moving forward and planning for a next step, even while we appear to be sitting. We’re anything but just sitting,” she said.
The Breman is no longer just a museum in Midtown. With exhibits in Morningside and Dunwoody, it is a cultural center with a wide reach. Gordon credited that reach to local partnerships with the Alliance Theater, the Atlanta Opera, the Jewish Film Festival, Theatrical Outfit and others.
“People who come to us know we have a service to provide and a voice to add. The fact that other arts and cultural organizations look to us for support, interpretation, assistance has been incredibly gratifying, and has helped spread our profile broader across the arts ecology,” Gordon said.
After the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, The Breman ended up on the front page of The New York Times. Gordon was ecstatic. The reporter wanted to know how The Breman was handling lessons for students and language around the Israel-Hamas war.
The Breman became a part of behind-the-scenes conversations between museums, educators and stakeholders. The focus was about how Holocaust education alone has not stopped antisemitism. The question: How do cultural institutions share the broader stories to enlighten the world about all the Jewish peoplehood is and has been?
“There is a whole 5,000 years of other stories that we want to share … It’s a national and international conversation, and we’re taking part in it,” Gordon said.
Connecting people to Jewish history, culture and the arts is what moves Gordon. She described tying photography, ballet and jazz together springing from “A Jazz Memoir: Photography by Herb Snitzer” as the zenith of her time at The Breman.
Lumiere Atlanta owner Bob Yellowlees and his curator Tony Casadonte introduced Gordon to Herb Snitzer, a Jewish photographer who was documenting jazz artists. Local jazz artist and director of Neranenah Joe Alterman interviewed Snitzer. While Alterman created a concert from scratch to accompany the photography exhibit, Gordon brought in Ballethnic, a Black ballet company, to create a dance program.
The COVID-19 pandemic hit just before the opening of “A Jazz Memoir” and the exhibit was pushed back to September 2020, as the museum proceeded with caution. A virtual tour was available online. Ballethnic went on to perform a related program at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. in 2022 and the Alliance Theatre in 2023.
Gordon has made Atlanta her home for the past 30 years after moving from North Carolina to Wisconsin to Sweden and a few other stops. In 1996, Gordon left a small theatre in Savannah to serve as the Humanities and Special Programs producer for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.
“I was the only Southerner of the four producers, which was kind of fun. I got to really do the Southern Jewish thing,” Gordon said.
She’s been part of the Arts Festival of Atlanta, the National Black Arts Festival, the Rialto and Arts Capital Atlanta. When asked why she was moving to a part-time contracting job, she said, “I want to do just what I want to do.” She wants to use her skills and her connections to make magic happen.
