Release Date: February 13, 2015

February 2015 Programs Include
Looted Art Lecture, The Wind Up, and
Women and Identity in Contemporary
Culture Discussion

Press Release PDF Request Press Images

New York, NY - The Jewish Museum's expanded slate of lectures, discussions, and events continues in February 2015 with a conversation about beauty, image, and power in contemporary media featuring Deborah Willis of New York University and Adrienne Childs of Harvard University; a lecture on looted art by scholar Olaf Peters; and the next event in the popular after-hours series, The Wind Up.

Further program and ticket information is available by calling 212.423.3200 or online at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar. The Jewish Museum is located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan.

 

PROGRAM SCHEDULE - FEBRUARY 2015

 

This Is How We Do It - Mason Klein

Thursday February 5, 6:30pm

Curator Mason Klein leads a gallery walkthrough focusing on the inspiration behind Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power, as it developed from idea to reality, as expressed through the work included in the exhibition.

Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power is the first museum exhibition to explore the ideas, innovations, and influence of the legendary cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein (1872-1965). By the time of her death, Rubinstein had risen from humble origins in small-town Jewish Poland to become a global icon of female entrepreneurship and a leader in art, fashion, design, and philanthropy. As the head of a cosmetics empire that extended across four continents, she was, arguably, the first modern self-made woman magnate. Rubinstein was ahead of her time in her embrace of cultural and artistic diversity. She was not only an early patron of European and Latin American modern art, but also one of the earliest, leading collectors of African and Oceanic sculpture. The exhibition examines how Madame (as she was universally known) helped break down the status quo of taste by blurring boundaries between commerce, art, fashion, beauty, and design. Through 200 objects - works of art, photographs, and ephemera - Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power reveals how Rubinstein's unique style and pioneering approaches to business challenged conservative taste and heralded a modern notion of beauty, democratized and accessible to all.

Please note this program will take place in the exhibition galleries. A limited number of stools are available on a first come, first served basis.

Free with Pay-What-You-Wish Admission - RSVP Recommended

 

Dialogue and Discourse: Deborah Willis and Michaela Angela Davis

The Gertrude and David Fogelson Lecture

Thursday, February 12, 6:30pm

This conversation features two prominent women who have each written extensively on perceptions of beauty, image, and power in contemporary media. Presented in conjunction with Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power, the February 12 program continues Dialogue and Discourse, a series of evening conversations inspired by current exhibitions explores artistic practice, global perspectives, and cultural issues.

Deborah Willis, Ph.D, is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow, as well as the 1996 recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation award. Recent publications include Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present (WW Norton, 2009), Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photographs (WW Norton, 2009 and NAACP Image Award Literature Winner), and Black Venus 2010: They Called Her "Hottentot" (Temple University Press, 2010).

Adrienne L. Childs is an Associate of the W.E.B DuBois Institute for the Study of African and African American Research at Harvard University, and Curator at the David C. Driskell Center of the University of Maryland. She is co-editor of The Black Body in European Visual Art of the Long Nineteenth Century: Spectacles of Blackness, forthcoming from Ashgate. Her current project is an exploration of blacks in European decorative arts entitled Ornamental Blackness: The Black Body in European Decorative Arts.  

Free with Pay-What-You-Wish Admission - RSVP Recommended

 

The Wind Up Featuring Beverly and Le Chev

Wednesday, February 18, 8pm - 11pm

The Jewish Museum presents the next event in its popular series of after-hours events, The Wind Up. Featuring art, live music, activities, and an open bar, The Wind Up focuses on Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power, the first exhibition to explore the ideas, innovations, and influence of the legendary cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein (1872 - 1965). The evening features a performance by Brooklyn-based garage pop band Beverly, who released their debut album Careers in 2014 to wide acclaim. Fronted by the female vocalist and guitarist Drew Citron, Beverly embodies the "beauty is power" mantra espoused by Rubinstein as they combine dreamy vocal harmonies with a powerful barrage of guitars and post-punk sound. Rubinstein's iconic style as a beauty mogul will be celebrated through numerous art activities including: statement jewelry making, nail art inspired by Rubinstein's art collection, and a photo booth for capturing one-of-a-kind portraits.  

The event will also feature an opening DJ set by Le Chev that will celebrate beauty and power icons in music, and an open beer and wine bar. Exhibition tours of Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power will take place at 8:15 pm and 9:15 pm.

Tickets: $13 in advance; $18 day of event

 

Lecture: From "Degenerate Art" to Looted Art, Reflections on a Historical Process in Nazi Germany - Dr. Olaf Peters

Thursday, February 19, 6:30pm

Organized by Columbia University's Deutsches Haus and the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Ghosts of the Past: Nazi-Looted Art and Its Legacies convenes an international group of art historians, historians, curators, and scholars in provenance research and the history of German art dealership to explore an unexamined chapter of the legacies of the Third Reich. This conference, to be held at Columbia University on February 20 and 21, 2015, opens at the Jewish Museum with a keynote lecture by Olaf Peters, Professor, Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, and curator of the recent exhibition Degenerate Art at the Neue Galerie, New York. Dr. Peters will provide a historical overview of the developments and dynamics of the National Socialist cultural policy from its beginnings until the late 1930s. The campaign against modern art and examples of the seizure of art works will be explained by reconstructing the historical context of these actions. 

Olaf Peters is Professor at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. His fields of research and teaching include the history of modern art from 1800 until the present, German art of the 20th century, and the history of art history. His has published monographic studies on New Objectivity and National Socialism (Berlin 1998), Max Beckmann (Berlin 2005), and Otto Dix (2013), and served as curator of the exhibitions Otto Dix (New York/Montreal 2010/11), Degenerate Art (New York 2014), and Otto Dix: The War Triptych (Dresden 2014). Dr. Peters has also been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since 2002.

Free with RSVP

 

A Closer Look Gallery Talks

Mondays, February 2, 9, and 23, 1:00pm

Educators and curators engage visitors in discussions about select works of art in the exhibition, Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power.

Free with Museum Admission

 

Support

Public programs are made possible by endowment support from the William Petschek Family, the Trustees of the Salo W. and Jeannette M. Baron Foundation, William Halo, Benjamin Zucker, the Marshall M. Weinberg Fund, with additional support from Marshall M. Weinberg, the Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Foundation, the Saul and Harriet M. Rothkopf Family Foundation and Ellen Liman. Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

About the Jewish Museum

Located on Museum Mile at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, the Jewish Museum is one of the world's preeminent institutions devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary, offering intellectually engaging, educational, and provocative exhibitions and programs for people of all ages and backgrounds. The Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains a collection of over 30,000 works of art, artifacts, and broadcast media reflecting global Jewish identity, and presents a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed temporary exhibitions.  

The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York City. Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Museum admission is $15.00 for adults, $12.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for visitors 18 and under and Jewish Museum members. Admission is Pay What You Wish on Thursdays from 5pm to 8pm and free on Saturdays. For information on the Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3200 or visit the website at TheJewishMuseum.org.

Press contacts

Anne Scher, Molly Kurzius, or Alex Wittenberg

The Jewish Museum

212.423.3271 or pressoffice@thejm.org