Discovering Jewish Country Houses: Photographs by Hélène Binet

The display of more than 20 works takes as its inspiration the new book Jewish Country Houses (edited by Juliet Carey and Abigail Green, Profile Books, 2024), which sheds new light on a previously overlooked category of country houses owned, renovated, and at times built by Jews and individuals of Jewish descent.

Binet was commissioned to create photographic essays about nine houses, two mausoleums and a synagogue explored to capture their extraordinary and varied exteriors, gardens and interiors.

Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish country houses tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection. Many had spectacular art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, while others provided inspiration to the European avant garde. A few are now museums of international importance; many more are hidden treasures: all were beloved homes that bear witness to the remarkable achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe – and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust.