The Jewish Museum Features 'The Jewish Journey' Thru 9/19

The Jewish Museum will be featuring two new exhibitions beginning in May.  Sout African Photographs and South African Projections will be featured through September 19.  The Jewish Museum is dedicated to the enjoyment, understanding, and preservation of the artistic and cultural heritage of the Jewish people through its unparalleled collections, distinguished exhibitions, and related education programs. Using art and artifacts that embody the diversity of the Jewish experience from ancient to present times, throughout the world, the Museum strives to be a source of inspiration and shared human values for people of all religious and cultural backgrounds while serving as a special touchstone of identity for Jewish people.

Current exhibitions include:

SOUTH AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHS: David GoldBLATT

The Jewish Museum is presenting South African Photographs: David Goldblatt, an exhibition of 150 black-and-white silver gelatin prints taken between 1948 and 2009.  The photographs on view focus on South Africa's human landscape in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.  David Goldblatt has used his camera to explore South Africa's mines; the descendants of seventeenth-century Dutch settlers called Afrikaners who were the architects of apartheid; life in Boksburg, a small middle-class white community; the Bantustans or "puppet states" in which blacks were forced to live; structures built for purposes ranging from shelter to commemoration; and Johannesburg, the city in which Goldblatt lives.   Born and raised in Randfontein, South Africa, a gold-mining town near Johannesburg, in 1930, David Goldblatt has been photographing the changing political landscape of his country for more than five decades.  He is descended from Lithuanian Jews who fled Europe in the 1890s to escape religious persecution.  Growing up in segregated South Africa, he witnessed the deep humiliation and discrimination suffered by blacks and experienced anti-Semitism personally.  These experiences have informed his work.  South African Photographs: David Goldblatt is the largest New York City exhibition of Goldblatt's work since 2001.

SOUTH AFRICAN PROJECTIONS: FILMS BY William KentRIDGE

South African William Kentridge's work is internationally acclaimed for its theatrical qualities and for the artist's extraordinary techniques. Charcoal drawings by the artist are successively revised, erased, redrawn, photographed, and presented as film.  The four films on view are in The Jewish Museum's Permanent Collection and are from the series, Drawings for Projection, 1989-91.  Johannesburg-2nd Greatest City after Paris; Monument; Mine; and Sobriety, Obesity and Growing Old depict two fictional Jewish characters--the bloated industrialist Soho Eckstein and the vulnerable artist Felx Teitelbaum.  These protagonists embody the social, political, and moral legacy of apartheid.

 CURIOUS GEORGE SAVES THE DAY: THE ART OF MARGRET AND H.A. REY

Curious George, the impish monkey protagonist of many adventures, may never have seen the light of day if it were not for the determination and courage of his creators: illustrator H. A. Rey (1898-1977) and his wife, author and artist Margret Rey (1906-1996).  They were both born in Hamburg to Jewish families and lived together in Paris from 1936 to 1940.  Hours before the Nazis marched into the city in June 1940, the Reys fled on bicycles carrying drawings for their children's stories including one about a mischievous monkey, then named Fifi.  Not only did they save their animal characters, but the Reys themselves were saved by their illustrations when authorities found them in their belongings.  This may explain why saving the day after a narrow escape became the premise of most of their Curious George stories.  After their fateful escape from Paris and a four-month journey across France, Spain, Portugal, and Brazil, the couple reached New York in the fall of 1940.  In all, the Reys authored and illustrated over thirty books, most of them for children, with seven of them starring Curious George. The exhibition at The Jewish Museum features nearly eighty original drawings of the beloved monkey and other characters, preparatory dummy books, vintage photographs, and documentation related to the Reys' escape from Nazi Europe, as well as a specially designed reading room for visitors of all ages.

 MODERN ART, SACRED SPACE: MOTHERWELL, FERBER, AND GOTTLIEB

In 1951, architect PercivAl Goodman charged three avant-garde artists with commissions to decorate his Congregation B'nai Israel synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey.  Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, and Herbert Ferber-each of whom went on to become a major figure in the Abstract Expressionist movement-created, respectively, a large-scale lobby mural, a velvet Torah curtain, and a monumental exterior sculptural relief.  This exhibition marks the first time these works have been exhibited in a museum setting since they were created over sixty years ago. Motherwell's mural presents abstracted Biblical references such as Tablets of Moses (Ten Commandments), diaspora of the twelve tribes of Israel to the four corners of the world, and Ark of the Covenant.  The mural, one of the largest paintings of its time, is one of the few works in which the artist worked in a semi-representational manner; however, Motherwell's abstraction of the objects is in keeping with the bold style that he established in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Gottlieb's iconographic design for the Torah curtain, now in the collection of The Jewish Museum, is a late example in the development of his influential pictograph paintings of 1941-53. Ferber's monumental exterior relief, entitled And the bush was not consumed..., expresses a religious theme in an abstract three-dimensional form.  In addition to these major works, the exhibition includes drawings and photographs, as well as an architectural model of the Goodman-designed synagogue, to highlight the creative process of this groundbreaking collaboration. 

THE MONAYER FAMILY: THREE VIDEOS BY DOR GUEZ

In three documentary portraits, artist Dor Guez offers perspectives on ethnic identity, citizenship, and prejudice from different generations of the Monayers, a Christian Arab family in Israel.  Originally from the multiethnic, multifaith city of Lod - called al-Lydd by the Palestinians - family members in the videos include: Jacob, the patriarch who recounts the expulsion of the Arab citizens of the city of Lod after the 1948 war; his son Sami, who describes growing up among Jews as an Israeli citizen while simultaneously claiming a Palestinian identity; and Jacob's granddaughter Samira, who recounts her experience of prejudice as she is mistaken for being Jewish.  Counted among 125,000 Christian Arabs in Israel, the Monayers consider themselves a minority within a minority with respect to the Muslim population.  To further complicate matters, Guez is from a mixed Jewish and Christian Arab family.

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. 

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.

CULTURE AND CONTINUITY: THE JEWISH JOURNEY

A focused installation, "Theaters of Memory: Art and the Holocaust," including George Segal's monumental sculpture The Holocaust, 1982, is on view in the contemporary gallery of Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey.  Segal's full-scale study for the monument (located in San Francisco's Lincoln Park) is in the collection of The Jewish Museum.  The artist's work has become an icon not only of art about the Holocaust but also a work of art intimately associated with the Museum.  Also on display is a group of works drawn from the collection - painting, sculpture and video - by Eleanor Antin, Christian Boltanski, Tadeusz Kantor, Anselm Kiefer, Fabio Mauri and Frederic Matys Thursz.

            A new acquisition, Portrait of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, 1842, by 19^th 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."

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.

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 sculpture by Elie Nadelman.  A display of 38 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, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Ottoman Empire (Greece and Turkey), Georgia (of the former Soviet Union), Morocco, Israel, Italy, early 20th century Palestine, 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, including a Director's Highlights Tour with The Jewish Museum's Director Joan Rosenbaum and WNYC Radio's Brian Lehrer. 

For additional information, visit: http://www.thejewishmuseum.org