The Magnes appoints Dr. Alissa Schapiro as Senior Curator

BERKELEY — The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley, is proud to announce the appointment of Dr. Alissa Schapiro as its new Senior Curator beginning April 20, 2026. An accomplished art historian, educator, and curator, Dr. Schapiro joins the Magnes from the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, bringing a distinguished background in managing collections and curating nuanced exhibitions, along with a deep commitment to telling the diverse stories of the Jewish Diaspora. 

“This is a transformative moment for the Magnes and Dr. Schapiro is the creative leader we need to steward the museum’s outstanding holdings,. With her ability to bridge academic research and accessible, community-centered storytelling, Dr. Schapiro will help the Magnes be a catalyst for dialogue and understanding in our complex world.” — Hannah Weisman, Executive Director of the Magnes

“This is a transformative moment for the Magnes and Dr. Schapiro is the creative leader we need to steward the museum’s outstanding holdings,” said Hannah Weisman, Executive Director of the Magnes. “With her ability to bridge academic research and accessible, community-centered storytelling, Dr. Schapiro will help the Magnes be a catalyst for dialogue and understanding in our complex world.”

With a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and a B.A. from Harvard University, Dr. Schapiro began her art history career without a specific focus on Jewish culture. The overt antisemitism in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, spurred her to use her professional expertise to research and raise awareness of Jewish history and its contemporary significance. At the Magnes, she plans to leverage the collection’s incredible diversity—which reflects lived experiences from across the global Diaspora—to foster interdisciplinary research, object-based storytelling, and community building. “Curatorial practice, especially when it is collaborative, has the potential to reveal moments of connection within and between groups, cultures, and religions, encouraging understanding and strengthening belonging in our increasingly fractured society, while still reaffirming that which makes Jewish traditions and experiences unique and vibrant,” shared Dr. Schapiro.

“In our search for a Senior Curator, we looked for someone who could honor the Magnes’s legacy while pushing us into the future,” said Helen Bulwik, Chair of the Magnes Advisory Board and member of the search committee. “Dr. Schapiro stood out immediately for her intellectual rigor and her genuine passion for the Jewish experience. We are confident she will make the Magnes an even more vital and visible part of UC Berkeley, the Bay Area, and beyond.”

Dr. Schapiro found connections to the Magnes long before her appointment. Her doctoral dissertation at Northwestern University, which investigated American art and antisemitism during World War II, drew its title, “Busy with Other News,” from Arthur Szyk’s illustration of Ben Hecht’s “Ballad of the Doomed Jews of Europe” poem—an artwork in the Magnes’s collection. She views her move to Berkeley as beshert, or destiny, noting that the Magnes is the only encyclopedic Jewish collection at a public research university—a setting she describes as her professional “happy place.”

Join us in welcoming Dr. Alissa Schapiro to the Magnes!