Exhibition And Programs Coming To The Jewish Museum

NEW EXHIBITIONS

CROSSING BORDERS: MANUSCRIPTS FROM
THE BODLEIAN LIBRARY
September 14, 2012 through February 3, 2013

England's Bodleian Library at Oxford University, established by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1602, is renowned for its great treasures. Among them is one of the most important collections of medieval Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in the world. Crossing Borders: Manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries will feature over 60 works - Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts - the majority of which have never been seen in the United States. Included will be the splendid Kennicott Bible as well two works in the hand of Maimonides, one of the most prominent Jewish philosophers and rabbinic authorities. This presentation showcases a selection from the Bodleian's superb holdings within the larger context of the history of medieval Christian Hebraism - the study by Christian scholars of the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic sources, which first received full expression in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As Protestantism took hold in the sixteenth century, Hebraist trends resurged, sparking interest in the collecting of Hebrew books, and propelling the formation of the Bodleian's outstanding Hebraica collection. This exhibition is based on Crossing Borders: Hebrew Manuscripts as a Meeting-place of Cultures co-curated by Piet van Boxel and Sabine Arndt for The Bodleian Libraries. The New York City presentation has been organized by The Jewish Museum's Curator Claudia Nahson.

PRESS PREVIEW - Tuesday, September 11, 10 am - 1 pm

IZHAR PATKIN
September 14, 2012 through February 3, 2013

Ethereal veil paintings and a recent 12-foot tall clear glass sculpture by Izhar Patkin (b. 1955, Israel) will be on view as the first in a new series of installations presenting work by artists in all media, as well as works from the Museum's Permanent Collection. Curators will pursue projects that push artists' work in new directions and advance new ideas about art and culture. Patkin's artwork develops complex visual narratives and metaphors, often in relation to specific texts or stories. Using translucent, nontraditional materials that are often multidimensional, his paintings counter both the legibility of the post-Renaissance easel paintings and the Modernist concept of the sanctity of flat canvas support.

PRESS PREVIEW - Tuesday, September 11, 10 am - 1 pm

CONTINUING EXHIBITION

KEHINDE WILEY/THE WORLD STAGE: ISRAEL
Through July 29, 2012

The Jewish Museum is presenting Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel, featuring 14 large-scale paintings from the contemporary American painter Kehinde Wiley's newest series, The World Stage: Israel. The vibrant portraits of Israeli youths from diverse ethnic and religious affiliations are each embedded in a unique background influenced by Jewish ceremonial art. Also included are 11 works - papercuts and large textiles - chosen by the artist from The Jewish Museum's collection. All of the 14 paintings on view are being displayed in New York for the first time. A new acquisition by Wiley (born 1977, Los Angeles) served as impetus for the exhibition. The painting, Alios Itzhak (2011), is a nine-foot tall portrait of a young Jewish Ethiopian-Israeli man surrounded by an intricate decorative background inspired by a traditional Jewish papercut in the Museum's collection. Wiley says his appropriated decorative backgrounds serve as catalysts for his paintings. The paintings represent a unique fusion of contemporary culture with European traditions and those of North Africa and the Middle East. Roughly two-thirds of the portraits in the Israel series are of Ethiopian Jews, others are of native-born Jews and Arab Israelis. The artist is driven by an ongoing exploration of globalization, diasporas, cultural hybridity, and power. Saying he knows what it feels like to exist on the periphery, Wiley likes to catapult often powerless, anonymous young men of color onto enormous canvases and into the visual language of the powerful. The large size of the paintings reflects Wiley's observation that scale has been used as a measure of historical importance throughout art history.

EDOUARD VUILLARD: A PAINTER AND HIS MUSES, 1890-1940
Through September 23, 2012

The art of Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) - a painter who began his career as a member of the Nabi group of avant-garde artists in Paris in the 1890s - is celebrated at The Jewish Museum in the first major one-person, New York exhibition of the French artist's work in over twenty years. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 includes more than 50 paintings as well as a selection of prints, photographs and documents exploring the crucial role played by the patrons, dealers and muses who comprised Vuillard's circle. The exhibition examines the prominence of key players in the cultural milieu of modern Paris, many of them Jewish, and their influence on Vuillard's professional and private life. Vuillard's continuing significance from the turn of the 20th century to the onset of World War II are also explored. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 brings together works from public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe. A quarter of the paintings have never been exhibited publicly in America before. Vuillard's career spans fifty years. During his lifetime, Paris was the capital of the international avant-garde, the laboratory of new styles in art, music, poetry, and prose. Vuillard had unusually close and sustained relationships with his patrons; some became intimate and lifelong friends. In this glittering cultural milieu he became romantically involved with two fascinating women, Misia Natanson and Lucy Hessel, each of whom served as both patron and muse. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 traces the entire arc of Vuillard's career, in which he pursued painterly experimentation in color, media, and ambience, especially in portraiture. Vuillard's late portraits are a revelation - among the great examples in the twentieth century and of dazzling virtuosity. Experimental, yet deeply committed to the old masters throughout his life, Vuillard maintained a continual tension in his work between tradition and modernism.

MEDIA CENTER EXHIBITION

SANFORD BIGGERS AND JENNIFER ZACKIN: A SMALL WORLD . . .
EXTENDED through October 14, 2012

The video installation, Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin: a small world..., is on view in the Museum's Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center. In this video (1999-2001, 6 min. 30 sec.), Sanford Biggers and Jennifer Zackin juxtapose home movies of their families - one African American and one Jewish American - to explore The Commonalities of middle-class life across racial lines. The silent footage was shot during the childhood of the artists in the 1970s, Biggers in California and Zackin in New York. The similarities in both family narratives are striking, and the tone is playful. The Biggerses and the Zackins celebrate birthdays, travel to Disneyland, and entertain at indoor and outdoor gatherings. Yet the split screen sets up two clearly delineated and nonintersecting worlds - black America and white America. As a whole, the artwork leaves open the question of whether a bridge exists between these two universes.

CHILDREN'S EXHIBITION

ARCHAEOLOGY ZONE: DISCOVERING TREASURES
FROM PLAYGROUNDS TO PALACES

In Archaeology Zone: Discovering Treasures from Playgrounds to Palaces, an engaging and thoroughly interactive experience, children become archaeologists as they search for clues about ancient and modern objects. Visitors can discover what happens after archaeologists unearth artifacts and bring them back to their labs for in-depth analysis. Children ages 3 through 10 magnify, sketch and weigh objects from the past and the present, piece together clay fragments, interpret symbols, and dress in costumes. By examining these artifacts and imagining how people used these objects in their daily lives, children learn how forms have changed and evolved over time, and how these objects relate to their own lives.

MEDIA CENTER

THE BARBARA AND E. ROBERT GOODKIND MEDIA CENTER

The Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center features an exhibition space dedicated to video art and new media, and houses a digital library of 100 radio and television programs from The Jewish Museum's National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). Selections include such comedy favorites as "How to Be a Jewish Son," a panel discussion from a 1970 David Susskind Show featuring Mel Brooks; a 1947 radio drama entitled "Operation Nightmare" starring John Garfield and Al Jolson, produced by the United Jewish Appeal to call attention to displaced persons in postwar Europe; contemporary television documentaries on black-Jewish relations, Latino Jews, and klezmer music; interviews with artists such as Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Larry Rivers, George Segal and Ben Shahn; and Manischewitz wine commercials produced between 1963 and 1981 featuring Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford.

Episodes of such classic and contemporary television series such as Bridget Loves Bernie, Northern Exposure, The O.C., Seventh Heaven and Sports Night, as well as clips from The Colbert Report, feature interpretations of Jewish life-cycle events and holidays. A selection of musical performances includes a Hanukkah-themed video from the Latino-Jewish urban band Hip Hop Hoodios, an appearance by the Hasidic reggae star Matisyahu on The Late Show with David Letterman, a radio broadcast of liturgy composed by modern Zionist composer Marc Lavry, and a documentary on contemporary music featuring Frank London of The Klezmatics, Debbie Friedman, and Pharaoh's Daughter.

PERMANENT EXHIBITION

CULTURE AND CONTINUITY: THE JEWISH JOURNEY

Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey is comprised of close to 800 works. This vibrant, two-floor exhibition examines the Jewish experience as it has evolved from antiquity to the present over 4,000 years. Visitors to the 4th floor see the Ancient World galleries, featuring archaeological objects representing Jewish life in Israel and the Mediterranean region from 1200 BCE to 640 CE, and a dazzling installation of selections from the Museum's renowned collection of Hanukkah lamps. On the 3rd floor alone close to 400 works from the 16th century to the present are on view in this dramatic and evocative experience.

Portrait of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, 1842, by 19th century German artist Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, has been added to the "Modernity" section of Culture and Continuity. The subject of this portrait was the sister of famous composer Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a talented composer and musician in her own right. Fanny Hensel was the wife of a fellow painter, Wilhelm Hensel, whom Oppenheim met in Rome with the Nazarenes.Oppenheim, widely recognized as a portraitist, is known as the first Jewish artist to have benefited from the Emancipation, when new civil rights permitted Jews entry into academies of art for the first time in Europe. Extensively patronized by the Frankfurt branch of the Rothschild family, Oppenheim characterized himself (immodestly) as "a painter to the Rothschilds and the Rothschild of painters."

Other highlights of Culture and Continuity include: a pair of silver Torah finials from Breslau, Germany (1792-93) reunited at The Jewish Museum after sixty years of separation; paintings by such artists as Marc Chagall, Max Weber, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Isidor Kaufmann, Morris Louis, and Ken Aptekar; prints by El Lissitzky; and a sculpture by Elie Nadelman. A display of 36 Torah ornaments allows the viewer to compare artistic styles from different parts of the world. It features lavishly decorated Torah crowns, pointers, finials and shields from Afghanistan, Algeria, Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Ottoman Empire (Greece and Turkey), Georgia (of the former Soviet Union), Morocco, Israel, Italy, The Netherlands, Persia, Poland, Russia, Tunisia, the United States, and Yemen.

A suite of classic post-World War II works originally designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson and the prominent Abstract Expressionist sculptor Ibram Lassaw for Congregation Kneses Tifereth Israel in Port Chester, New York, is also on view in Culture and Continuity. Included are sections of a large wall sculpture/bimah screen, the eternal lamp, the Torah ark, and two of the four bimah chairs.

Television excerpts from the Museum's National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting are also included. The entire exhibition is accompanied by a series of thematic, random access audio guides using MP3 technology.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Concert
SUMMERNIGHTS: Howard Fishman AND THE BITING FISH BRASS BAND
Thursday, July 12
7:30 pm
Tickets: $15 general public; $12 students/over 65; $10 Jewish Museum members

Concert
SUMMERNIGHTS: SLAVIC SOUL PARTY!
Thursday, July 19
7:30 pm
Tickets: $15 general public; $12 students/over 65; $10 Jewish Museum members

Concert
SUMMERNIGHTS: ONE RING ZERO
Thursday, July 26
7:30 pm
Tickets: $15 general public; $12 students/over 65; $10 Jewish Museum members

Artist Talk
IZHAR PATKIN AND CROSSING BORDERS:
HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS AS A MEETING-PLACE OF CULTURES
Thursday, September 27
6:30 pm
Tickets: $15 general public; $12 students/over 65; $10 Jewish Museum members

FAMILY PROGRAMS

ART IN JULY: DROP-IN ART WORKSHOP
Mondays, July 9, 16, 23 and 30
1 - 4 pm
Age 3 and up
Free with Museum admission

PEOPLE, PORTRAITS & PLACES Art Adventure Mondays
Mondays, July 9, 16, 23 and 30
11:15 am - 12:15 pm
Ages 4 to 7
Free with Museum admission

July 9 Strike a Pose
July 16 Places & Spaces
July 23 Pattern Power
July 30 Animal Hunt

ART WORKSHOP AND GALLERY TOUR FOR KIDS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
Sunday, September 30
10:30 - 12 noon
Ages 5 to 17
Free with Museum admission. Space is limited - the public may call 212.423.3256 to register.

DROP-IN ART WORKSHOP
Sundays beginning September 9
Noon - 4 pm
Age 3 and up
Free with Museum admission

STORYBOOKS AND ART
Sundays beginning September 9
1:15 pm
Ages 3 to 7
Storytelling and gallery activities
Free with Museum admission

SPECIAL NEEDS PROGRAMS

SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETED TOUR FOR VISITORS WHO ARE DEAF OR HARD OR HEARING
Monday, September 10
2 pm

Tea Time Tour of Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940, followed by light refreshments.

Free with Museum admission

TOUCH TOUR FOR VISITORS WHO ARE BLIND OR PARTIALLY SIGHTED
Monday, September 24
3 pm

Tea Time Tour focused on the fall Jewish holidays, from Yom Kippur to Simchat Torah, followed by light refreshments.

Free with Museum admission
GENERAL INFORMATION

INFORMATION HOTLINE
To reach the Museum's offices, call: 212.423.3200.

ONLINE INFORMATION
TheJewishMuseum.org

OTHER INFORMATION
Public and Family Programs 212.423.3337
The Jewish Museum's Cooper Shop 212.423.3211
Celebrations - The Jewish Museum Design Shop 212.423.3260

MUSEUM HOURS
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday 11:00 am to 5:45 pm
Thursday 11:00 am to 8:00 pm
Friday 11:00 am to 4:00 pm
Wednesday CLOSED
CLOSED major legal and Jewish holidays
NOTE: The children's exhibition, Archaeology Zone: Discovering Treasures from Playgrounds to Palaces, is open Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (not on Saturday).

COOPER SHOP AND JEWISH MUSEUM DESIGN SHOP HOURS
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 11:00 am to 5:45 pm
Wednesday 11:00 am to 3:00 pm
Thursday 11:00 am to 8:00 pm
Friday 11:00 am to 4:00 pm
CLOSED Saturday and major legal and Jewish holidays

ADMISSION
Adults $12.00
Senior Citizens $10.00
Students $ 7.50
Children under 12 FREE
Jewish Museum Members FREE
Saturdays FREE