Jewish museums across Europe say they are living through a difficult new period: fewer people coming through their doors, more money spent on security, and a sense among some staff that simply visiting has come to feel like a political act. Directors describe institutions determined to stay open even as the climate around them grows harder.
An "extreme" decline in Vienna
At the Jewish Museum Vienna, the fall in attendance has been stark. "Nowadays, even in comparison with previous periods of tension in the Middle East, the decrease in the number of visitors is extreme," said Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz, a leading curator and head of the museum's collection, in comments to The Jerusalem Post.
School visits, long a mainstay of the museum's work, have been hit especially hard, she said. Some teachers in classes with large numbers of Muslim and Arab pupils have been reluctant to organize trips, and in some cases parents have kept children away. The drop, she suggested, reflects a wider unease that took hold after the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023.
A pattern across the continent
Vienna is not alone. A joint survey of American and European Jewish museums carried out in 2024 by the Association of European Jewish Museums and the Council of American Jewish Museums documented a broad decline in visitors and a rise in security incidents after October 2023, according to the associations. The report found that many institutions had reported harassment — ranging from hate messages to vandalism and threats — and that some had scaled back or canceled programs and strained partnerships with schools and other organizations.
The findings echo a broader rise in antisemitic incidents recorded across several European countries since the war began, tracked by national monitoring bodies and Jewish community organizations.
Security at the door
For many of these museums, heightened security is now routine. Bag checks, screening and visible guards have become standard at Jewish cultural sites in cities including Berlin, Amsterdam and Prague — measures that staff say are necessary but that can also make a museum feel less like an open cultural space and more like a guarded one. Directors have spoken of the tension between keeping visitors safe and remaining welcoming.
Difficult conversations
The strain has reached major national institutions too. In London, the British Museum postponed a lecture on ancient Israel and Judah, planned for a Jewish Culture Month program, after learning that some people who had registered intended to disrupt it. Its director, Nicholas Cullinan, defended the delay but argued against retreat, saying "the answer cannot be to abandon difficult conversations," The Art Newspaper reported. The talk was later rescheduled.
Staying open
Despite the pressures, the museums are adapting rather than closing. Some are rethinking how they work with schools, expanding online programming, and looking for ways to reach audiences who have stayed away. Kohlbauer-Fritz has argued that reversing the decline matters beyond ticket numbers — that Jewish museums play a role in a city's cultural life and in countering prejudice through education.
That mission, curators say, is exactly what makes the current moment so testing: institutions built to foster understanding are finding it harder to draw the very visitors they hope to reach.
