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…
Today, post-Communist Europe is experiencing a museum boom. Countries are trying to consolidate a collective identity in museums that tell their nation’s story in a way that was not possible under communism. Jewish museums and Holocaust memorials offer not only histories of Jewish communities in a given town or country, but also a perspective on…
These political cartoons made by Israeli teens offer an interesting insight into the issues that preoccupy Israeli youth today. The Jerusalem Press Club, in collaboration with the Israel Cartoon Museum, launched a competition titled titled “Cartoon, Criticism, Care.” In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, the competition deals with the balance between freedom of…
Right now, on the bleeding edge of December, Coney Island is all over New York City. Just as the weather gets frosty and summer beach days recede from memory, the beach is suddenly everywhere. There’s a big exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum titled “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008,” which opened on November…
For five years a sculpture constructed with steel letters stood in a Milwaukee suburb, gathering some attention but no controversy — that is, until a visiting blogger from New Jersey saw it and declared there were antt-Semitic slurs embedded in the artwork. The result was an Internet fury, which culminated in the work quickly being…
If Harold Garde, a painter who lives in Maine and Florida, wasn’t a nonagenarian, the framework of his exhibit at the Orlando Museum of Art might scare him. The first room of “Harold Garde: Mid-Century to This Century” contains Abstract Expressionist works from the 1950s-70s, while the second room features the more figurative paintings that…
The Museum of Jewish Heritage is located at the tip of Manhattan, in Battery Park, nestled beside a quaint garden with panoramic views of the Statue of Liberty. Offering three floors of teachings on Jewish life, with objects culled over the past century, the museum aims to educate viewers about Jewish life before, during and…
It’s surprisingly difficult to pinpoint the Jewish ghosts and haunts of New York. Although museum directors and tour guides rack their brains, they often end up stumped. Google searches on “Jewish ghosts New York City” yield no results. Of course, spirits usually seem to be disembodiments of famous figures. Some died tragically of disease, others…
About 25 years ago, Alan Teller and Jerri Zbiral bought a shoebox of 127 negatives and prints that they found under a couch at an estate sale in Northbrook, Illinois, near their home in Evanston. Their friend Irving Leiden, who had recently died, had owned the box, and his widow didn’t recall any information about…
One day, when fashion icon Donna Karan was 11, she went up in the attic of her home and discovered old family photos hidden away in a trunk. In one, she saw her mom with an unfamiliar man. When her mother, known as Queenie, discovered her there, she became physically abusive. According to Karan’s newly…
Whenever Isaiah Sheffer, the playwright and director who co-founded Symphony Space, worked in his home, he retreated to “The Mineshaft,” a spacious closet located near what was probably a dumb waiter at one point, furnished with a little desk. The makeshift office also accommodated suits, ties and Sheffer’s toolbox. Over the years, boxes of his…
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