Based on months and months of silence, one would think it was the Magnes Museum rather than the Department of Defense that was hatching plans for a war in Iraq.
For at least a year, it has been evident that plans for a new Jewish museum in San Francisco’s South of Market area were in big trouble. But the museum’s director, Connie Wolf, erected a wall of silence and declined to comment.
Our phone calls were often not returned. Museum staff members admitted they were ordered not to talk to reporters. And everyone on the Magnes board deferred to Wolf.
It wasn’t until last week, when Warren Hellman was elected museum chairman, that some hard facts started to leak out of the fortress that Wolf built. But even Hellman’s comments were limited. When our reporter interviewed him, Wolf was unexpectedly present, and often interrupted Hellman’s remarks with her own interpretations.
What we did learn is that there’s little likelihood that any groundbreaking — either in SOMA or at the museum’s other property on Allston Way in Berkeley — will happen for at least five years.
If anyone can make it happen, it’s Hellman. He’s a well-connected philanthropist and businessman whose family can trace its San Francisco ties back to the days when Levi Strauss first started making jeans.
But the task may even be too great for him.
Rabbi Brian Lurie, who preceded Wolf, tried to raise funds for the SOMA location in better economic times and couldn’t get anywhere near the goal of $100 million-plus. And Lurie, too, had important ties accumulated during the 17 years he ran the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, and the five years he ran the former United Jewish Appeal nationally.
While other Jewish building projects, like Jewish community centers and synagogues, are still raising donations in bad economic times, the museum’s fund-raising campaign is dead in the water. Those in the know say local philanthropists feel there are far greater needs in the Jewish community than a museum.
That begs the bigger question of why the well-established Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley ever agreed to merge with the nascent Jewish Museum San Francisco. Now the Berkeley museum’s future is as murky as that of the San Francisco museum.
Hellman has a lot on his plate. Our hope is that he will deal with it honestly, ceasing the practice of avoiding the press and hiding the true facts.