at the Museum. Mayer July resulted from a collaboration between Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a professor of performance studies and folklore at NYU, and her father, Mayer Kirshenblatt, who was born in Poland in 1916. With Barbara's encouragement, Mayer taught himself to paint as a septuagenarian and produced sixty-five paintings chronicling life in the Polish town of Opatów before the Holocaust. History Founded by Seymour Fromer and Rebecca Camhi Fromer, the Magnes Museum was dedicated to retrieving and preserving the art and artifacts of Jewish daily life, culture, and religion. Among the numerous artists and artisans whose careers and projects he helped launch and whose crafts he helped preserve: Deborah Kaufman, who birthed the first Jewish Film Festival; Vivian Kleiman, a Peabody Award-winning producer of the first professional documentary film on the Jewish Diaspora (''Routes of Exile: A Moroccan Jewish Odyssey); Lev Liberman and his band, the Klezmorim, the world's first Klezmer revival band; David Moss who revived the art of Hebrew calligraphy and contemporary Ketubah design; Victor Ries, a Jewish metalsmith and silversmith whose work includes the entrance gate to the original Magnes Museum property; Among the projects that Seymour and Rebecca created: cataloguing the treasure trove of Yiddish records salvaged from dumpsters; collecting libraries of Yiddish books from the homes of Jewish chicken farmers in Petaluma, CA retrieving Judaica poised to be discarded as Jewish life in various countries was diminishing, among them Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Czechoslovakia, India, and Central Europe. See also Judah Leon Magnes Commission for the Preservation of Pioneer Jewish Cemeteries and Landmarks Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture References External links Official site Western Jewish History Center Page at NY Jewish Museum on My America exhibit San Francisco Chronicle article on They Called Me Mayer July Art in the San Francisco Bay Area Art museums and galleries in California Education in Berkeley, California Institutions accredited by the American Alliance of Museums Jewish-American history in California Jewish museums in California Museums established in 1961 Museums in Berkeley, California University museums in California University of California, Berkeley