Release Date: August 16, 2017

Advance Schedule of Exhibitions at the Jewish Museum Fall 2017-Spring 2018

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The Jewish Museum’s upcoming schedule includes a diverse array of exhibitions. This fall the Museum will present an exhibition that focuses on Amedeo Modigliani’s early work, as well as the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States drawn from The Israel Museum’s world-renowned collection of Jewish costumes. In January, for the first time in 25 years, the Museum will open its new, major collection exhibition that will feature more than 650 works from antiquities to contemporary art. Finally, the spring sees the first survey in the United States of the work of Marc Camille Chaimowicz, one of the first artists to merge performance and installation art.

Information is subject to change. More exhibitions will be added as they are confirmed. Contact the Communications Department at 212.423.3271 or pressoffice@thejm.org to confirm information.

Fall 2017

Modigliani Unmasked
September 15, 2017
February 4, 2018
Press Preview: September 12, 2017, 10 am to 1 pm

This exhibition will feature early drawings by Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920) acquired directly from the artist by Dr. Paul Alexandre, his close friend and first patron. These works — many of which are being shown for the first time in the U.S. — will illuminate how Modigliani’s heritage as an Italian Sephardic Jew is pivotal to understanding his artistic output. The exhibition will include approximately 150 works, those from the Alexandre collection as well as a selection of Modigliani’s paintings, sculptures, and other drawings from collections around the world. Modigliani’s art will be complemented by work representative of the various multicultural influences — African, Greek, Egyptian, and Khmer — that inspired the young artist during this lesser-known, early period. The exhibition is organized by Mason Klein, Senior Curator, The Jewish Museum.

Veiled Meanings: Fashioning Jewish Dress
from the Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

November 3, 2017
March 18, 2018
Press Preview: November 1, 2017, 10 am to 1 pm

This exhibition is the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition drawn from The Israel Museum’s world-renowned collection of Jewish costumes. It showcases over 100 articles of clothing from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, arranged as complete ensembles or shown as stand-alone items. A sumptuous array of apparel from over 20 countries on four continents offers an exceptional opportunity for American audiences to view many facets of Jewish identity and culture through rarely seen garments. The extraordinary range of textile designs and clothing in the exhibition illuminates the story of how diverse global cultures have thrived, interacted, and inspired each other for centuries. Jewish communities from Afghanistan, Algeria, Denmark, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany, Georgia, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Israel, Italy, Libya, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Tunisia, Turkey, the United States, Uzbekistan, and Yemen are represented. Showcasing color, texture, function, artistry, and craftsmanship, the exhibition also offers an incisive and compelling examination of diversity and migration through the lens of fashion. Veiled Meanings: Fashioning Jewish Dress, from the Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem is organized by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The exhibition is organized by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. The Israel Museum’s curatorial team includes Curator in Charge, Daisy Raccah-Djivre; Exhibition Curator, Efrat Assaf-Shapira; and Scientific Advisors, No’am Bar’am Ben-Yossef and Esther Juhasz; Head of Traveling Exhibitions, Sivan Eran-Levian. Claudia J. Nahson, Morris & Eva Feld Curator at the Jewish Museum, is Supervising Curator for the New York presentation.

Math Bass
November 3, 2017 – March 18, 2018
Press Preview: November 1, 2017, 10 am to 1 pm

Los Angeles-based artist Math Bass (b. 1981) works across video and performance as well as painting and sculpture, which she executes in a distinctly graphic style. In Bass’s ongoing series Newz!, which she began in 2012, zigzags, smoke plumes, and architectural shapes collide on canvases and translate into sculptures that feel rooted in the language of advertising, yet indicate that something more personal and mysterious is at play. The installation she has created for the Museum’s lobby will show traces of the symbols and ceremonies of her Jewish upbringing; Decalogue-like forms appear in the paintings, while the sculpture invokes a cloaked figure. The exhibition is organized by Kelly Taxter, Associate Curator, The Jewish Museum.

Winter 2018

Scenes from the Collection
New, major installation of the Museum’s collection
Opens January 2018

The Jewish Museum's unparalleled collection spans 4,000 years of Jewish culture through nearly 30,000 objects, including painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, ceremonial objects, antiquities, works on paper, and media. Scenes from the Collection will transform the Museum’s third floor and feature over 650 works from antiquities to contemporary art - many of which have rarely, if at all, been on view at the Museum. The new exhibition will be divided into different sections, or scenes, highlighting the diversity and depth of the collection. The stories the works of art tell will illuminate multiple perspectives on being Jewish in the past and present, how Jewish culture intersects with art, and how it is part of the larger world of global interconnections.

Sections in the exhibition include a scene featuring over 50 of the most significant works in the collection — from antiquities to the twenty-first century; a section examining the Museum’s large and rich collection of portraits and the nature of portraiture; and a contemporary Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Wonders) crowded with works of art and artifacts of various origins and materials arranged in unusual juxtapositions, among others. Several scenes will change annually, and one will change every six months, so that different subjects can be examined while more of the collection is on view.

Scenes from the Collection is organized by a Jewish Museum curatorial team headed by Susan L. Braunstein, Senior Curator, and Jens Hoffmann, Director of Special Exhibitions and Public Programs, and including Shira Backer, Assistant Curator; Stephen Brown, Neubauer Family Foundation Associate Curator; Mason Klein, Senior Curator; Claudia Nahson, Morris and Eva Feld Curator; Rebecca Shaykin, Leon Levy Assistant Curator; Kelly Taxter, Associate Curator; and Aviva Weintraub, Associate Curator.

27th Annual New York Jewish Film Festival
January 10-23, 2018

The New York Jewish Film Festival, presented by the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is one of the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, unique in New York City, and one of the longest-running partnerships between two major New York cultural institutions. The films included in the festival will be announced in the fall 2017.

Spring 2018

Marc Camille Chaimowicz: Your Place or Mine …
March 16
August 5, 2018
Marc Camille Chaimowicz (b. post-war Paris) established himself in the 1970s London art scene as an artist who merged performance and installation art in a manner as playful as it was critical and sensual. This large-scale survey is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States. It will present Chaimowicz’s cross-disciplinary work in sculpture, painting, video, collage, installation, and design made over his nearly 50 year career, including commissions newly created for the occasion. The exhibition is organized by Kelly Taxter, Associate Curator, The Jewish Museum.

About the Jewish Museum

Located on New York City’s famed Museum Mile, the Jewish Museum is a distinctive hub for art and Jewish culture for people of all backgrounds. Founded in 1904, the Museum was the first institution of its kind in the United States and is one of the oldest Jewish museums in the world. Devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary, the Museum offers diverse exhibitions and programs, and maintains a unique collection of nearly 30,000 works of art, ceremonial objects, and media reflecting the global Jewish experience over more than 4,000 years.

Press contacts

Anne Scher, Daniela Stigh, and Alex Wittenberg  
212.423.3271 or pressoffice@thejm.org