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Jewish History Museum Shows Off Three New Items

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The National Museum of American Jewish History is touting three new items on display there, each like a tiny piece of a larger mosaic of history.

gratz_rebecca sully_thomas NMAJH
(Thomas Sully portrait of Rebecca Gratz.)

One is a portrait of Rebecca Gratz (right) who, along with her family, loomed large in Philadelphia history.

"It's got all these wonderful parts," Maria Nevelson (in photo above) told KYW Newsradio on Wednesday.  "Wood dowels, clothespins, spool threads, all those things that you find on the streets, out in the garbage -- But put together."

"And she was the queen of assemblage," she added.  "She knew how to put them together and then transcend all those basics of what they are and create a composition."

The third new item is an early 1900s butter churn, significant, says museum director Michael Rosenzweig (right), for its very ordinariness.

"One of the aspects of the story we tell is what Jews have been able to achieve in this country," he said.

Reported by John Ostapkovich, KYW Newsradio 1060.

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