Jean Rosensaft

Jean Bloch Rosensaft is Director of the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum at Hebrew Union College (HUC) in New York (1989-present), a dynamic university museum dedicated to showcasing contemporary artists of all backgrounds whose works explore Jewish identity, texts, traditions, and pressing cultural, social, and historical themes. Its thoughtfully curated and temporary exhibitions foster dialogue about art’s role in enriching heritage, memory, and cross-cultural understanding. Rosensaft simultaneously has served as HUC’s Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs (1989-2024) and Senior Advisor to the President (2024-2025).

For over four decades, Rosensaft has organized more than 150 exhibitions and numerous traveling exhibitions at venues throughout North America. She curated the first major group exhibitions of works by Holocaust survivor artists and second generation Holocaust descendant artists in conjunction with the first historic mass gatherings of Holocaust survivors and their offspring during the early 1980s. Her notable museum exhibitions include Chagall and the Bible and Justice in Jerusalem: The Eichmann Trial at New York’s Jewish Museum; Rebirth After the Holocaust: The Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945-1950, incorporated into the core exhibition at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Museum in Germany; and Frank Stella: Had Gadya and Sacred Land: Photographs by Ralph Gibson at the Heller Museum and Skirball Museums in Cincinnati and Los Angeles.

Rosensaft joined Hebrew Union College after serving as a curator and Assistant Director of Education at The Jewish Museum in New York (1984-89), and NEA Lecturer and Coordinator of Educational Publications and School Programs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (1977-1984).

Rosensaft is a Founder and Vice-President of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. She served for over three decades on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Collections and Acquisitions Committee, for which she co-authored its collections management policy; served on its Art in Public Spaces Committee, which commissioned permanent, site specific contemporary art installations by Sol LeWitt, Joel Schapiro, Ellsworth Kelly, and Richard Serra; and currently serves on its Education Committee. She served as Vice President of Park Avenue Synagogue, currently serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Moment magazine, and previously served on the Editorial Board of Reform Judaism magazine. She chairs the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture’s Panel on Art and Photography and recently has been appointed Chair of the Contemporary Art Committee at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Museum in Germany.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College, Rosensaft pursued graduate studies in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts and has written and lectured widely on the Holocaust, Jewish cultural history, and modern art. She is the author of Chagall and the Bible (Universe Books, 1987), editor of The Eye of the Collector: The Jewish Vision of Sigmund R. Balka (HUC-JIR Museum, HUC/NY, 2006), editor and contributor of essays for scores of exhibition catalogs, and author of essays and articles published in God, Faith & Identity from the Ashes: Reflections of Children and Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2014), CCAR Journal – The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Moment magazine, Lilith magazine, reformjudaism.org, and other publications.