Rickie Burman's career has been marked by the opening of new museums, even though her first experience in Manchester did not run totally to plan: "The Jewish community has no more need for a Jewish Museum than it does for a ham sandwich," said a local Jewish newspaper.
Nearly 25 years later, Burman is again working on a new venue, as the director of the Jewish Museum in London. The £9m redevelopment will be unveiled next year and will mark the coming together of two museums that amalgamated in 1995 but had been operating from separate sites.
The Finchley museum has closed and its collection has moved to Camden Town, which has tripled in size through the acquisition and redevelopment of an adjacent former piano factory. But Burman might not have been here at all if it wasn't for one of those vital decisions made early on in a career.
"I received two job offers on the same day," says Burman. "One was an ethnography post with Liverpool Museums, the other was at the Manchester Studies Unit. So I had to make a decision which way to go."
Burman opted for the Manchester Studies Unit, where she focused on oral history in the Jewish community and the role of women. She combined academic work with her role as the coordinator of a plan to develop the Manchester Jewish Museum.
One of the main attractions of the Manchester Studies Unit over the Liverpool job was the chance to work with its director, the historian Bill Williams.
"Bill Williams had quite a profound influence on me in terms of taking an active role in recovering social history and heritage. In a way, he was a great pioneer of that kind of commitment to inclusion and accessibility, which is fashionable today."
Despite some opposition, the Manchester Jewish Museum finally opened in 1984, five years after Burman became its coordinator. But soon after she moved to London with her husband, who had a post at University College London. She arrived at a time when a new museum of the Jewish East End was being developed in Finchley, north London.
As the museum's curator, it was Burman's job to rescue and recover the disappearing heritage of the Jewish East End. This was something that was not being done by London's other Jewish museum, which was established in 1932.
"At the time, the older Jewish Museum's policy was not to collect material that was less than 100 years old. There was a concern about being rigorous and maintaining high standards and not opening the floodgates to social history material.
"But as far as I was concerned it was vital to collect material that related to the experience of the majority of Jewish people whose roots lay in the great migration from Eastern Europe from 1881 to 1914."
Burman's museum later changed its name to the London Museum of Jewish Life, before amalgamating with the Jewish Museum in 1995. It was then decided that the two museums should be brought together on one site.
Now this is happening, the museum will have a higher profile as one of the UK's larger independent museums. Its focus on subjects such as immigration and diversity will also attract attention, as these topics seem to be moving up the public agenda again.
Part of the Jewish Museum's mission is to "celebrate diversity and challenge prejudice", and two recent events have highlighted why these aims are so important in a Jewish context.
The first is the death on 7 March of Leon Greenman, the London-born campaigner and witness to the Holocaust. His collection of memorabilia, which is an important part of the Jewish Museum's displays, includes heartbreaking items relating to his son, Barney, who was killed at Auschwitz, along with Greenman's wife, Else.
Greenman's death is a reminder of past atrocities, but the recent hate mail sent to the Israeli-born manager of Chelsea Football Club, Avram Grant, shows that anti-semitism is still an issue today.
A social purpose
"I believe anti-semitism is a problem in the UK that is little recognised " says Burman. "The Community Security Trust [an organisation that catalogues anti-semitic incidents] recorded 577 anti-semitic incidents in the UK in 2007, the second highest annual total since it began recording such incidents in 1984, including the highest number of violent anti-semitic assaults."
Burman says the museum has not been affected by anti-semitism, although it does receive occasional hate mail. But she says teachers who bring their school groups "often have concerns about attitudes among their pupils, for example coins being thrown at a Jewish teacher, or a pupil saying when studying the Jewish life cycle that he wished all Jews were dead".
There is a lot of talk about tackling racism and social inclusion, so it is refreshing when a museum's aims are spelled out so simply. "We do feel that the museum has a social purpose and a relevance to key contemporary issues," says Burman.
"And we do aim to make a difference by promoting a positive appreciation of diversity, encouraging interfaith understanding and combating all forms of prejudice. These are fundamental to what we do."
This attitude has led to exhibitions such as Closing the Door?, which used the centenary of the 1905 Aliens Act, the first restrictive immigration legislation in the UK, which was directed against Eastern European Jewish immigrants, as a starting-point for looking at issues relating to immigration up to the present day.
Exploring new identities
Exhibitions such as Closing the Door? reflect a change in emphasis in Burman's view on what types of stories the museum should tell.
"When I started my work with the Museum of the Jewish East End, our early exhibitions focused on new ways to reflect and include the experience of the diverse groups making up the Jewish community - ranging from those with their roots in the Jewish East End, to refugees from Nazism, to the Jews of Aden.
"I think all of that caught the spirit of the 1980s. But London has moved on and has become an even more complex and cosmopolitan city."
Burman says that rather than focusing on exhibitions that are specific to certain sections of the Jewish community, it is also developing ones that highlight the Jewish experience in relation to other minority communities and are part of the wider cultural and social context. So coming up is an exhibition on the involvement of Jewish people in the entertainment industry.
"I hope that by presenting the Jewish experience as one of Britain's oldest minorities, the Jewish Museum can enable people of all faiths and cultural backgrounds to explore how it is possible to embrace new, more fluid forms of allegiances and interests, without necessarily losing their particular histories and identities.
"The Jewish community is an illustration of one that belongs in this country, has become an integral part of British society and but has maintained its identity and traditions."
But the Jewish Museum is about far more than just challenging prejudice. The other part of its mission is to "explore and preserve Jewish heritage".
As such, it has one of the world's finest collections of Jewish ceremonial art and important Hebrew manuscripts. Many of these objects will be on display at the redeveloped museum, which Burman hopes will attract 85,000 visitors a year, up from 30,000 at the two former sites.
Event Communications, which worked on the redevelopment of Glasgow's Kelvingrove, is the exhibition designer of the new museum, and the architect is Long and Kentish, which designed the Pallant House Gallery extension in Chichester, winner of the 2007 Gulbenkian Prize.
As for Burman, she is not one of those directors who craves a high profile and moves from job to job to make a name for themselves. Having spent nearly 25 years at just two museums, she now wants to see the project through.
"My career has developed in a very organic kind of way and a fairly unique way. And I feel it has been a very interesting and challenging journey that I have taken."
It is a journey whose next stop is a major redevelopment that will lead to new challenges and responsibilities, both for Burman and her museum.
Nearly 25 years later, Burman is again working on a new venue, as the director of the Jewish Museum in London. The £9m redevelopment will be unveiled next year and will mark the coming together of two museums that amalgamated in 1995 but had been operating from separate sites.
The Finchley museum has closed and its collection has moved to Camden Town, which has tripled in size through the acquisition and redevelopment of an adjacent former piano factory. But Burman might not have been here at all if it wasn't for one of those vital decisions made early on in a career.
"I received two job offers on the same day," says Burman. "One was an ethnography post with Liverpool Museums, the other was at the Manchester Studies Unit. So I had to make a decision which way to go."
Burman opted for the Manchester Studies Unit, where she focused on oral history in the Jewish community and the role of women. She combined academic work with her role as the coordinator of a plan to develop the Manchester Jewish Museum.
One of the main attractions of the Manchester Studies Unit over the Liverpool job was the chance to work with its director, the historian Bill Williams.
"Bill Williams had quite a profound influence on me in terms of taking an active role in recovering social history and heritage. In a way, he was a great pioneer of that kind of commitment to inclusion and accessibility, which is fashionable today."
Despite some opposition, the Manchester Jewish Museum finally opened in 1984, five years after Burman became its coordinator. But soon after she moved to London with her husband, who had a post at University College London. She arrived at a time when a new museum of the Jewish East End was being developed in Finchley, north London.
As the museum's curator, it was Burman's job to rescue and recover the disappearing heritage of the Jewish East End. This was something that was not being done by London's other Jewish museum, which was established in 1932.
"At the time, the older Jewish Museum's policy was not to collect material that was less than 100 years old. There was a concern about being rigorous and maintaining high standards and not opening the floodgates to social history material.
"But as far as I was concerned it was vital to collect material that related to the experience of the majority of Jewish people whose roots lay in the great migration from Eastern Europe from 1881 to 1914."
Burman's museum later changed its name to the London Museum of Jewish Life, before amalgamating with the Jewish Museum in 1995. It was then decided that the two museums should be brought together on one site.
Now this is happening, the museum will have a higher profile as one of the UK's larger independent museums. Its focus on subjects such as immigration and diversity will also attract attention, as these topics seem to be moving up the public agenda again.
Part of the Jewish Museum's mission is to "celebrate diversity and challenge prejudice", and two recent events have highlighted why these aims are so important in a Jewish context.
The first is the death on 7 March of Leon Greenman, the London-born campaigner and witness to the Holocaust. His collection of memorabilia, which is an important part of the Jewish Museum's displays, includes heartbreaking items relating to his son, Barney, who was killed at Auschwitz, along with Greenman's wife, Else.
Greenman's death is a reminder of past atrocities, but the recent hate mail sent to the Israeli-born manager of Chelsea Football Club, Avram Grant, shows that anti-semitism is still an issue today.
A social purpose
"I believe anti-semitism is a problem in the UK that is little recognised " says Burman. "The Community Security Trust [an organisation that catalogues anti-semitic incidents] recorded 577 anti-semitic incidents in the UK in 2007, the second highest annual total since it began recording such incidents in 1984, including the highest number of violent anti-semitic assaults."
Burman says the museum has not been affected by anti-semitism, although it does receive occasional hate mail. But she says teachers who bring their school groups "often have concerns about attitudes among their pupils, for example coins being thrown at a Jewish teacher, or a pupil saying when studying the Jewish life cycle that he wished all Jews were dead".
There is a lot of talk about tackling racism and social inclusion, so it is refreshing when a museum's aims are spelled out so simply. "We do feel that the museum has a social purpose and a relevance to key contemporary issues," says Burman.
"And we do aim to make a difference by promoting a positive appreciation of diversity, encouraging interfaith understanding and combating all forms of prejudice. These are fundamental to what we do."
This attitude has led to exhibitions such as Closing the Door?, which used the centenary of the 1905 Aliens Act, the first restrictive immigration legislation in the UK, which was directed against Eastern European Jewish immigrants, as a starting-point for looking at issues relating to immigration up to the present day.
Exploring new identities
Exhibitions such as Closing the Door? reflect a change in emphasis in Burman's view on what types of stories the museum should tell.
"When I started my work with the Museum of the Jewish East End, our early exhibitions focused on new ways to reflect and include the experience of the diverse groups making up the Jewish community - ranging from those with their roots in the Jewish East End, to refugees from Nazism, to the Jews of Aden.
"I think all of that caught the spirit of the 1980s. But London has moved on and has become an even more complex and cosmopolitan city."
Burman says that rather than focusing on exhibitions that are specific to certain sections of the Jewish community, it is also developing ones that highlight the Jewish experience in relation to other minority communities and are part of the wider cultural and social context. So coming up is an exhibition on the involvement of Jewish people in the entertainment industry.
"I hope that by presenting the Jewish experience as one of Britain's oldest minorities, the Jewish Museum can enable people of all faiths and cultural backgrounds to explore how it is possible to embrace new, more fluid forms of allegiances and interests, without necessarily losing their particular histories and identities.
"The Jewish community is an illustration of one that belongs in this country, has become an integral part of British society and but has maintained its identity and traditions."
But the Jewish Museum is about far more than just challenging prejudice. The other part of its mission is to "explore and preserve Jewish heritage".
As such, it has one of the world's finest collections of Jewish ceremonial art and important Hebrew manuscripts. Many of these objects will be on display at the redeveloped museum, which Burman hopes will attract 85,000 visitors a year, up from 30,000 at the two former sites.
Event Communications, which worked on the redevelopment of Glasgow's Kelvingrove, is the exhibition designer of the new museum, and the architect is Long and Kentish, which designed the Pallant House Gallery extension in Chichester, winner of the 2007 Gulbenkian Prize.
As for Burman, she is not one of those directors who craves a high profile and moves from job to job to make a name for themselves. Having spent nearly 25 years at just two museums, she now wants to see the project through.
"My career has developed in a very organic kind of way and a fairly unique way. And I feel it has been a very interesting and challenging journey that I have taken."
It is a journey whose next stop is a major redevelopment that will lead to new challenges and responsibilities, both for Burman and her museum.
Rickie Burman at a glance
Rickie Burman was born in 1955 and grew up in the Allerton area of Liverpool. She studied archaeology and social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, before joining Manchester Polytechnic's Manchester Studies Unit in 1979. While working there she was also the coordinator of a project to create the Manchester Jewish Museum.
She left Manchester in 1984 to become the curator of the London Museum of Jewish Life. The museum amalgamated with the Jewish Museum, London, in 1995 and Burman became director of the new organisation.
Burman represents the independent sector on the London Museums Group committee and was recently elected president of the Association of European Jewish Museums.
Rickie Burman was born in 1955 and grew up in the Allerton area of Liverpool. She studied archaeology and social anthropology at the University of Cambridge, before joining Manchester Polytechnic's Manchester Studies Unit in 1979. While working there she was also the coordinator of a project to create the Manchester Jewish Museum.
She left Manchester in 1984 to become the curator of the London Museum of Jewish Life. The museum amalgamated with the Jewish Museum, London, in 1995 and Burman became director of the new organisation.
Burman represents the independent sector on the London Museums Group committee and was recently elected president of the Association of European Jewish Museums.