The Jewish Museum is an art museum housed at 1109 Fifth Avenue, in the Felix M. Warburg House, along the Museum Mile on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The museum holds a collection of approximately 30,000 objects, including religious artifacts, fine art, and media, making it one of the largest museums dedicated to the Jewish culture worldwide. The museum is known for its expansive cultural and historical scope, staging art exhibitions that center "Jewish heritage and viewpoints while appealing to broader audiences".

The Jewish Museum originated in 1904 with Judge Mayer Sulzberger's donation of ceremonial objects to the Jewish Theological Seminary, later expanded through gifts and works sent for safekeeping from Poland in 1939 due to the outbreak of World War II. The museum was established in the Warburg family mansion, donated in 1944 by Frieda Warburg, and opened to the public in 1947. Originally designed by C.P.H. Gilbert in the châteauesque style, the building underwent expansions in 1959 and 1963.

Appointed director in 1972, Joy Ungerleider-Mayerson oversaw the acquisition of 600 ancient artifacts from Israel and the 1975 exhibition Jewish Experience in the Art of the 20th Century. Under Joan Rosenbaum's directorship (1981–2010), introduced new public initiatives—most notably the launch of the New York Jewish Film Festival in 1992—and completed a major renovation in 1993 by Kevin Roche, who added 11,000 square feet and modernized the facilities for exhibitions and education while preserving the building's Gothic revival character. In 2006, the museum adjusted its Sabbath observance policy by opening to the public on Saturdays. In 2011, Claudia Gould was appointed Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director and served in this role until her retirement in 2023. She was succeeded by James S. Snyder in November 2023.

Throughout its history, the Jewish Museum has made important contributions to the study of modern and contemporary art in the United States. Described as a "leading arbiter of mid-20th-century American art", it played host to the first solo museum exhibitions of painters Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Ad Reinhardt; introduced Jasper Johns to the broader public through the 1957 Artists of the New York School: Second Generation; staged the first museum retrospective of Robert Rauschenberg in 1963; and presented the influential 1966 exhibition Primary Structures that helped launch Minimalist sculpture.

The collection that seeded the museum began with a gift of Jewish ceremonial art objects from Judge Mayer Sulzberger to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America on January 20, 1904, where it was housed in the seminary's library. The collection was moved in 1931, with the Seminary, to 122nd and Broadway. The Jewish Theological Seminary received over 400 Jewish ceremonial items and created, 'The Museum of Jewish Ceremonial Objects', previously the Jacob Schiff Library. The collection was subsequently expanded by major donations from Hadji Ephraim Benguiat and Harry G. Friedman. In 1939, in light of WWII, Poland sent about 350 objects to New York city from homes and synagogues in order to preserve them.

Following the death of financier and philanthropist Felix Warburg in 1937, his widow, Frieda Schiff Warburg, donated the family’s Fifth Avenue mansion to the Jewish Theological Seminary in January 1944 for the purpose of housing the Jewish Museum’s growing collection. The museum officially opened to the public in May 1947. At the time of the opening, Frieda Warburg stated that the institution was intended not as a memorial to Jewish suffering, but as a celebration of Jewish culture, history, and tradition.

The museum initially focused on Jewish ceremonial and historical objects, reflecting the seminary’s scholarly orientation and the broader interest in preserving Jewish heritage in the aftermath of World War II. In 1959, the museum added a sculpture garden designed by Austrian-American artist Adam List, offering a new venue for modern sculpture and outdoor exhibitions. This was followed by a significant architectural expansion in 1963, intended to accommodate the museum’s growing collection and public programming, including the museum's Judaica collection. The new addition marked the beginning of a more publicly engaged phase of the museum’s institutional history.

The 1962 appointment of Alan R. Solomon, a Harvard-trained art historian, as the museum's director brought a contemporary vision to the institution. Solomon was oriented toward showing what he called "the new art" and organized major exhibitions of emerging American artists including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Ellsworth Kelly. His programming emphasized serious engagement with living artists, including mid-career retrospectives—then rare in the museum world—and explored both Jewish content and postwar modernist abstraction. In 1963, he organized Rauschenberg's first retrospective, followed by John's retrospective in 1964. Solomon's brief tenure culminated in a commission from the U.S. government to organize the country's pavilion at the 32nd Venice Biennale in 1964, where Rauschenberg's work won the grand prize.