From now until August 14 at the Art Institute of Chicago, there is a quiet yet remarkable exhibit of 100 photographs by the American artist Aaron Siskind (1903-1991) taken from the Institute’s extensive holdings of his work. The work feels like a retrospective as the photographs show such breadth and range in his images, and…
I nearly stepped on the tall, bearded man laying out pairs of big red headshots on the floor of a hallway in the offices of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia. It was J.J. Tiziou — who you might know best from the massive photographic installation of “How Philly Moves” between the…
Against a red background, a featureless white head, lacking its crown, opens to reveal a set of white steps descending into a black cavern. A man in profile, the barest combination of ivory skin and black robe, stares down into the almost pleading sockets of a skull in his hands. A shining, simple crown hovers…
Only late in “Eva Hesse,” the new documentary about Eva Hesse’s art and her life, do we actually hear the artist’s voice. Part of an interview she gave to the art historian and writer Cindy Nemser, the audio recording is poignant, even haunting, given that by the time the transcript of the interview appeared as…
When Dr. Joanne Intrator’s father, Gerhard Intrator, was dying, he had one wish: that his daughter fight for the property the family had been forced to abandon when they fled the Nazis. True to her word, Intrator, a psychiatrist based on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, set out for Germany to lay claim to the buildings…
Many years ago, my colleague Maurice Berger and I proposed an exhibition on fashion and the Jews to the powers-that-be at the Jewish Museum. Nothing came of it, save countless meetings and drafts and redrafts of our proposal. The project was shelved. I was delighted, then, to learn of “Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History,” an…
There is tragic irony in the circumstances surrounding the mysterious death on March 19 of American Jewish Civil Rights photographer Bob Adelman. An ongoing police investigation will attempt to explain how Adelson, 85, was found dead with a head injury in his Miami Beach home. During arduous years as the national photographer for the Congress…
Annie Leibovitz is perhaps the best-known portrait photographer of our time. Her powerful and iconic images have graced the covers of magazines such as Rolling Stone, Vogue and Vanity Fair for over three decades. Several collections of Leibovitz’s work have been published, and exhibitions of her photographs have appeared in museums and galleries worldwide. A…
A New Yorker profile written by Malcolm Gladwell in 1999 made Lois Weisberg, Chicago’s commissioner of cultural affairs, famous because, Gladwell wrote, she was among those “who make the world work.” Weisberg appeared in Gladwell’s best-selling book “The Tipping Point,” largely because of her facility with viral networking and her dedication to all kinds of…
It was, as it should be, dark and damp when I arrived one night in the tiny village of Great Tew, at the northeastern edge of the Cotswolds. A British investment banker I know in New York had recommended eating at the Falkland Arms, a quintessential English pub, he said. And sure enough, there were…
Anne Grant wanted to arrive early at the Center for Jewish History for the opening of her biggest exhibition to date. Her train from New Haven had run an hour behind schedule, and she rushed into the echoing lobby juggling a backpack, an overstuffed Longchamp tote and a blue water bottle. She has straight, mousy…
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