Small world: at (Ratner-chaired) Museum of Jewish Heritage, new Genealogy Research Center named for board member Kalikow, who at MTA boosted Ratner

A headline in New York YIMBY today, Museum Of Jewish Heritage Reviews Plans For Genealogy Research Center In Battery Park City, Manhattan:

The Museum of Jewish Heritage is currently reviewing plans to build a new genealogy research center at its facility at 36 Battery Place in Battery Park City. Named the Peter and Mary Kalikow Genealogy Research Center, the waterfront expansion will provide visitors with Jewish genealogy resources through JewishGen, a non-profit organization and affiliate of the museum.

There's no real news, so I suspect it's based on the same press release that led Patch 2/17/23 to report:

Plans are moving ahead to create the Peter and Mary Kalikow Genealogy Research Center at Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust following a visit by Peter Kalikow and his daughter, Kathryn Kalikow, with Museum President and CEO Jack Kliger.

But there's a connection here, one I cited last month while writing about Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner's various ventures.

Ratner chairs the Museum of Jewish Heritage's board, and maybe it's not surprising that the leadership of the MJH includes First Vice Chair Kalikow and Trustee H. Dale Hemmerdinger, both (Jewish) real estate developers who chaired the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board and agreed to Ratner's Atlantic Yards renegotiations.

I'm not suggesting that Kalikow is making a philanthropic contribution as any quid pro quo, just that they travel in a small world, and have various reasons to be friendly and to share similar priorities.

But the bottom line, for Atlantic Yards watchers, is that there are continued reasons for Ratner and Kalikow to be tight.

A new board

Ratner also managed--orchestrated?--what a June 2017 press release described as "JewishGen.org Announces Board Refreshment with the Appointment of Three New Directors."

While Ratner was re-elected as Chairman, the new board--which continues today--included Michael S. Glickman, president and CEO of the museum he chairs; Kalikow, a museum board member, and E. Randol Schoenberg, an attorney based in Los Angeles with expertise in handling cases involving looted art, and the recovery of property stolen by the Nazi authorities during the Holocaust.

That was accompanied by an announcement that new staff would be hired.

Before then, according to the Internet Archive, Ratner was one of three members of the Board of Directors, plus a 16-member Board of Governors, which no longer exists. Schoenberg was on that larger board.

It's unclear exactly how that all happened--a change in bylaws? a weighted election? 

One of those three board members was David Marwell, the former director of the parent museum, who announced his resignation in 2015 after Ratner took over as chairman, and rather tepidly described his relationship with his new boss as having "been okay."

It's not surprising that the museum's current director would be on the JewishGen board.