Stories about how we look at Jewish artists and how Jewish artists look at the world.
Forward with the Arts
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Culture How a Jewish woman from Baltimore found a new religion in Henri Matisse
Growing up in the tightly-knit Jewish community of Baltimore in the 1960s, I took special pride knowing that the dazzling paintings — by such modern masters as Picasso, Cezanne, Monet and especially Matisse — that lined the gallery walls of a special wing in the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) were all there thanks to…
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Culture How a unique Torah scroll scribed by a woman led to a historic bar mitzvah
When Gavriel Kedem became a bar mitzvah, he was focused on the usual things: chanting the parsha, giving his dvar, the people watching. He wasn’t thinking about it as a historic moment. But it was — Gavriel was chanting from a scroll written by his mother, Shoshana Gugenheim Kedem, the first woman ever to be…
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Art In Frank Lloyd Wright’s only synagogue, a masterful blending of color and light
Driving south along Old York Road in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, a giant milky-glass tetrahedral dome, cross-hatched with cast-aluminum, seems to rise from the surrounding woods. A bold pastiche of prehistoric, modern and biblical, it simultaneously evokes Mayan ruins, a Japanese pagoda and Mount Sinai, while creating a wholly new form. Beth Sholom, dedicated on Sept….
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Culture How an unapologetically vulgar collector horrified fellow Jews — and revolutionized the art world
As two exhibitions in Philadelphia and New York showcase the seven-decade career of America’s greatest living artist, 91-year-old Jasper Johns, two new histories have arrived, revealing the crucial role that has been played by Jewish art collectors, “The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France”and “Belonging and Betrayal: How Jews…
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Culture Your art, your stories — a collection of the paintings and sculptures that inspire our readers
On a wall in Barbara Sander’s apartment in Sarasota, Fla., a seabird flies between two palm trees across a pinkish-orange sky. Ellen Green feels inspired by a deep forest, one she used to gaze at for hours when she was a child. Chani Miller of Highland Park, N.J. finds peace and content when she looks…
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Culture The Asian-Jewish film series ‘LUNAR’ is back for a second season. Watch an episode here
Why are there so few Asian Jews in the movies? What does it mean for a TV show to be “authentic?” What’s up with “Mulan?” All these topics come up on this episode of LUNAR, a film series on Asian-Jewish identity which packs a lot into each of its segments. The project dates 2020, when…
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Culture In this brilliant exhibit, you can’t look at the art unless you let it look at you
At first glance, there’s nothing explicitly Jewish about Barbara Kruger’s work. Yet after viewing “Thinking of You, I Mean Me, I Mean You,” the current retrospective of her five decades of work at the Art Institute of Chicago, on view through January 24, 2022, certain Jewish themes emerge: the value of omnivorous reading, high and…
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Culture The stories behind the art on my (and your) walls
From my desk, I can see a cloudy blue sky. Below it, the Catskills in autumn — lavender mountains and an empty stretch of road beside the water. Lower down, a spoonbill contemplates the water below him. Maybe he’s looking for a fish. Some distance away, unfazed by the incongruous presence of autumn mountains and winter…
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