A metal door set into a mountain in Switzerland offers a way out for fine art investors forced to pay over the odds to insure their collections. The doorway leads into a disused military bunker, one of several being sold off by the Swiss government and whose echoing, climate-controlled chambers, once used to stockpile munitions,…
Museum negotiations to bring artifacts from abroad for exhibits are typically complex. And the detailed discussions that brought a stunning collection opening on Iranian Jewry here in October were no exception. But the institutional arrangements between the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles and Beit Hatfutsot: The Museum of the Jewish People,…
Although the Middle East seems to be forever in the news, for many of us, its reality remains distant. And the media cycle, with its focus on violence and turmoil, can make the region feel even more foreign. So it’s welcome when anyone finds a way to bring the Middle East closer to home. This…
Vienna-born potter Lucie Rie, who is the subject of Emmanuel Cooper’s biography “Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter,” shows how a Jewish artist can express Yiddishkeit in creativity despite repeated assimilations. Rie, who lived from 1902 to 1995, was the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Gomperz, an ear, nose and throat specialist and a friend of Sigmund Freud….
In the 1940s and ’50s, the New York art world was in thrall to Abstract Expressionism. Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko: These were some of the big-name artists, and they made equally big paintings — emotionally charged canvases with curving lines, splotches of paint or oceanic fields of color. There was…
“X-Files” nerds, get your Kleenex out. Rumors have surfaced that former “X-Files” co-stars David Duchovny (Fox Mulder) Gillian Anderson (Dana Scully) are not only dating… but have moved in together. According to CelebrityDirtyLaundry.com, Anderson and her two kids have moved into Duchovny’s abode. Sounds like some type of Cali-fornication to us! For all those uninitiated…
As a Jew of Iraqi descent living in Israel, I was taught to take prideful note of the role that my ethnic group played in building the country. ”You see that bridge?” my uncle would ask me as we watched footage of a Tel Aviv sports event. “An Iraqi Jew built it.” And when the…
Jon Stewart skewered Mitt Romney for his “culture” comments that suggested that Israelis are somehow superior to Palestinians. With frequent references to Romney’s gaffe-prone ways, Stewart reported on Romney’s controversial comments during his visit to Israel that attempted to pay homage to Israeli know-how and ingenuity. The late-night comic pointed out that there must be…
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