By Debra Shein
In 1993, shortly after moving across the country from Boston to Portland, Anne LeVant Prahl joined the board of the then-nascent Oregon Jewish Museum (OJM), which had begun its life in 1989 as a “museum without walls” under the inspiration of Rabbi Joshua Stampfer. At the time, the fledgling organization borrowed exhibitions created elsewhere, brought them to Oregon, and displayed them in public spaces around the state. It had no permanent home and no employees.
Little did Anne imagine that in 1997, she would go on to become “employee #1” and that 30 years after first joining the board, she would be serving as the Curator of Collections for an institution that had become a major player in the Jewish museum world and among the foremost of the museums of Oregon. All those who have enjoyed working with her will greatly miss her warm presence when she retires at the end of this year. To serve in her stead, OJMCHE Archivist Alisha Babbstein will step up to the role of Director of Collections and Exhibitions, and Sarah Harris has been brought on as Collections Manager.
Anne’s career with the organization that would become OJMCHE began when she read an article in The Oregonian talking about the many things Rabbi Stampfer had done for the community, particularly highlighting his founding of the museum. With her MA in anthropology specializing in folklore and museum studies, she was intrigued. She was searching for a new direction to follow after leaving her job with the Museum Management Program of the National Park Service (NPS) on the East Coast to move to Oregon with her husband. In graduate school, much of her training had focused on database management. In her role with NPS, she had traveled to over 30 locations in New England training curators of archives and artifact collections at diverse sites including ships, historic houses, etc. on automating their records. After reading the article in the newspaper, Anne called the rabbi the next day. “You’re in luck!” he said. “There’s a board meeting tomorrow. Come join us.”
On the board, Anne met Judy Margles, who was then working as a curator at OMSI and would go on to become OJMCHE’s visionary first director. She and Anne were the only two on the board trained specifically in museum work, and they soon became fast friends. Anne also began volunteering at OMSI to help Judy in her work there, and they would spend the next 30 years working together.
When OJM merged with the Jewish Historical Society of Oregon in 1995, the museum acquired its collections, which would become the core of OJM’s holdings. These consisted of records of the Jewish community in the state, an oral history project including 150 interviews with some of the earliest Jewish voices in the region, and an array of artifacts. Organizing and documenting the treasures the historical society had amassed was right up Anne’s alley. Even before becoming an official employee of OJM (which in 2014, after merging with the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center, would become OJMCHE), she began to develop a robust database to document the burgeoning collections and track membership in the organization as it bloomed. That database is only just this year being replaced with a commercially-developed one.
In 1997, the board voted to start a pledge campaign to enable OJM to hire its first director. At that time, Anne left the board and was hired as the museum’s first employee to work as administrator of the campaign. In 1999, Judy began her work as Director. Over the years, OJMCHE has grown to engage 20 employees, a board of 25 officers and at-large members, and a host of volunteers. “Judy has been a true visionary,” says Anne. “From the beginning, she said that we needed to be a museum which curates its own exhibits. I’ve been honored to be a part of that and to take Judy’s ideas and run with them. Helping implement her ambitious vision for where this museum should be has been nothing short of amazing.”
Over the years, Anne has treasured the many opportunities she’s had in her role. She has cherished the experiences of “getting to go to the homes of Jews in the community and around the state to talk to people about the material culture that their families have passed down, decide whether or not their items belong in the collection, and get them to understand that their memories and experiences are valuable.” When researchers have come from out of state to write books using the items in OJMCHE’s collections, Anne has been able to help them because the museum has items unique to Oregon and available nowhere else. She has enjoyed relationships with museum staff, volunteers, and community members, and takes pleasure in having trained interns who’ve gone on to careers in museums and library science.
Another highlight of her professional life, she notes, is having been able to serve on the governor’s Oregon Heritage Commission, where she’s had the opportunity “to see the work that the tiniest towns and historical societies all over the state are doing and help direct funds towards promoting heritage work in the state.” Many times, she reports, small grants from the commission help to keep the doors open for these small but valuable organizations when otherwise they would have to fold.
As an encore to her long and fruitful career at OJMCHE, Anne will continue as she began — as a volunteer. She will be assisting Alisha in collections, researching and organizing information on the history of the Jewish community in Oregon. Anne also plans to spend more time visiting her two grandchildren (now almost two and four) in New York State, traveling (perhaps first to Greece and then Denmark), and pursuing her hobbies in textile art (quilting and knitting). When pressed for information on what other projects she might adopt next, she muses that she’s “taken the advice of people she respects who’ve retired before and suggested not jumping into other work too quickly, allowing time for the right opportunity to present itself.”