January 2016 Programs Feature Artist Rachel Rose, Scholar David Shneer, Photography Studio Workshop, and More

New York, NY - The Jewish Museum's winter 2016 slate of lectures, discussions, and events launches in January with artist Rachel Rose in conversation with Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum; a three-part photography studio workshop with artist Carey Denniston; a lecture by scholar David Shneer about Soviet-Jewish photographers who bore witness to the Holocaust; and a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition, Becoming Jewish: Warhol's Liz and Marilyn.

Further program and ticket information is available by calling 212.423.3337 or online at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar.  The Jewish Museum is located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan.

 

PROGRAM SCHEDULE - JANUARY 2016

 

This Is How We Do It: Becoming Jewish: Warhol's Liz and Marilyn

Tuesday, January 14, 2pm

Joanna Montoya Robotham, Neubauer Family Foundation Assistant Curator, the Jewish Museum, will speak about the process of organizing Becoming Jewish: Warhol's Liz and Marilyn.

Becoming Jewish: Warhol's Liz and Marilyn presents a close look at two of Andy Warhol's muses, Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe, exploring the Jewish identities of Warhol's most celebrated subjects. Both Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor converted to Judaism in the 1950s. Warhol was fascinated by their star power and used publicity stills to create his now iconic portraits in the early 1960s. This intimate, single-gallery exhibition features several portraits of these renowned actresses alongside a large selection of photographs, letters, and ephemera, shedding new light on their relationships with Judaism and Warhol's interest in celebrity culture.

Free with Museum Admission, RSVP Recommended

 

AM at the JM: Rachel Rose

Thursday, January 21, 8am at Think Coffee, Union Square, 123 Fourth Ave, NYC

Artist Rachel Rose will discuss her recent projects with Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum.

An emerging artist based in New York, Rachel Rose is currently receiving her first solo exhibition in the United States at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Rose (b. 1986) is known for her striking video installations that deftly merge moving images and sound with nuanced environments. She investigates specific sites and ideas by connecting them to broader, related subject matter.

Jens Hoffmann is a curator and writer based in New York. He is currently Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs at the Jewish Museum in New York. Hoffmann was Director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco (2007-12), and Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (2003-07). He has curated many exhibitions around the world including the 9th Shanghai Biennale (2012-13), the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011) and the 2nd San Juan Triennial (2009). He has contributed numerous articles to art magazines such as Frieze, Artforum, Parkett and Texte zur Kunst as well as written over 200 essays for exhibition catalogues and museum publications.

Free

 

The Power of Pictures Talkback

Thursday, January 21, 6pm

Louis Menashe, author of Moscow Believes in Tears: Russians and Their Movies, will lead a discussion following a screening of Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929, 68 min.).

Louis Menashe, Professor Emeritus, New York University, held the Charles S. Baylis Chair in History and headed the Department of Social Sciences. He has been a consultant to the film division of the Museum of Modern Art and to ABC Television, and was Associate Producer for the award winning PBS documentaries, Inside Gorbachev's USSR (1990) andIn the Shadow of Sakharov (1991). He is a longtime contributor to, and Associate Editor of, the film magazine, Cineaste.

From early vanguard constructivist works by Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky, to the modernist images of Arkady Shaikhet and Max Penson, Soviet photographers played a pivotal role in the history of modern photography. The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film, on view through February 7, 2016, examines how photography, film, and poster art were harnessed to disseminate Communist ideology, revisiting a moment in history when artists acted as engines of social change and radical political engagement from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution through the 1930s.

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

 

Adult Studio Workshop: Photo Transformations

Thursdays, January 28, February 4, February 11, 6:00pm-8:30pm

This three-session workshop, led by artist Carey Denniston, will explore a range of avant-garde aesthetics and photographic techniques inspired by the exhibition The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Film, Early Soviet Photography. Working in the Museum's art studio and makeshift darkroom, class participants will recapture the experimental mode of early Soviet photographers by using an array of image-making processes - such as photogram, cyanotype, and photomontage - to create their own poster, zine, or collage. Graphic and spatial reconstructions of photographs will activate image and message, and may incorporate techniques of surprise, humor, and even propaganda. At the end of the workshop, each participant will have created a modern work of visual subversion.

Carey Denniston has explored photographic processes for twenty years, "making strange" the relationship of two and three dimensional spaces with sculpture, film, and photography. Based in Brooklyn, Denniston studied at the International Center of Photography, and received an MFA in Studio Art from Hunter College. She has exhibited in New York and Los Angeles, and is represented by KANSAS (New York). She has attended artist residencies including Shandaken Project at Storm King (New Windsor, New York), Coast Time (Lincoln City, Oregon), and École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (Arles, France).

Course Fee: $60 general public; $45 Jewish Museum members. All materials included in course fee.

 

Lecture: David Shneer - Through Soviet Jewish Eyes

Thursday, January 28, 6:30pm

In his passionate book Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust, David Shneer, the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, Professor of History, Religious Studies, and Jewish Studies and 2015-2016 College Scholar at the University of Colorado, Boulder, considers the work of two dozen Soviet-Jewish photographers who bore witness to Nazi genocide during World War II. These military photographers were the first liberators to capture such atrocities on camera, three years prior to the arrival of Americans at Buchenwald and Dachau. In a compelling narrative, Shneer tells the stories and highlights the images of these wartime photographers.

David Shneer is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Association for Jewish Studies, and his research focuses on 20th-century European, Russian, and Jewish history and culture. Through Soviet Jewish Eyes was the winner of the 2013 Jordan Schnitzer Prize of the Association for Jewish Studies and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. Shneer also organized the related exhibition Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, which debuted at the Colorado University Art Museum in Boulder in 2011 and travelled to five museums around the country.

This program is made possible, in part, through the generosity of Genesis Philanthropy Group.

Tickets: $15 adults; $12 students and seniors; $10 Jewish Museum members

 

A Closer Look Gallery Talk

Tuesday, January 12, 19, 26, 1:30pm

Educators engage visitors in discussions about select works of art in The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film.

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, Barbara and Benjamin Zucker, the late William W. Hallo, the late Susanne Hallo Kalem, the late Ruth Hallo Landman, 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.  Additional support is provided by Lorraine and Martin Beitler, the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations, Genesis Philanthropy Group, and through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.