Published: 12 August 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
HELEN LIGHT, who died on Sunday, was the driving force behind the establishment and growth of the Jewish Museum for almost three decades, writes REBECCA FORGASZ.
Last Sunday, 7 August 2022, our community lost one of its treasures – Dr Helen Light AM.
Helen was best known to many of us as the inaugural Director of the Jewish Museum of Australia, a role she held for almost three decades. It was in that capacity that I first met her twenty-five years ago. I knew her almost all of my adult life.
Helen had the uncanny ability to see in you the potential for things you never imagined you could do. She took great leaps of faith in people, bestowing tremendous opportunity on the untrained and the uninitiated. She would tend to you and encourage you with just as much as you needed, and then she would stand back and proudly watch you take flight.
One day, some time after I had started working part-time at the Museum as Assistant Schools Programs Coordinator, Helen asked me if I would like to curate an exhibition. I remember literally having no idea what that involved, but decided that if Helen thought I could do it, I was willing to give it a go.
And the rest, as they say, is history. That invitation, that opportunity, changed my life’s trajectory. It opened up a whole world to me – a world of art and artefacts, of intellectual adventure and creative expression. It was the beginning of my career in museums, which culminated in my being granted the huge honour of succeeding Helen when she stepped down from her role as Director after 27 years at the helm.
As I said many times when I took over that position, Helen may have been much shorter than me, but she had enormous shoes that I could only hope to fill.
Helen built the Jewish Museum from the ground up, establishing it as one of Australia’s leading small museums. As explained in the Museum’s tribute to Helen, published on their website earlier this week: “Starting with the Jewish Museum in its original location, at the Melbourne Hebrew Congregation in 1983, she was responsible for developing its significant collection and motivated a community to believe in the dreaming of a new and more ambitious home, a place where the Museum could reach beyond its original aims, to something more aspirational. By 1995, that ambition was reached, when she moved a now substantial and noteworthy collection, growing staff and passionate volunteers, into the Museum’s current place, at 26 Alma Road, St Kilda. Curating over 100 exhibitions … Dr Light helped to define the Jewish Museum as the shining example of what a true community museum can be.”
