June 2015 Programs at the Jewish Museum Feature Groucho Marx, Hank Willis Thomas, Isabelle Graw, and More

New York, NY - The Jewish Museum's 2015 slate of lectures, discussions, and events continues in June with Wish You Were Here, a discussion between Groucho Marx, as presented by performer Noah Diamond and Jens Hoffmann, The Jewish Museum's Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs.  Other highlights include artists Hank Willis Thomas and Sarah Crowner in conversation about their work on view in the exhibition Repetition and Difference; a lecture on the history of painting by scholar Isabelle Graw; 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 – JUNE 2015

Lecture: Isabelle Graw

The Economy of Painting - Notes on the Vitality of a Success-Medium

Thursday, June 4, 6:30pm

This lecture considers painting as a medium that is both historically specific and burdened by tradition. Graw will begin with an assessment of painting today, proposing that the art form is correlated with what our contemporary economy most desires. In order to better understand the medium now, Graw will look back at theories of painting since the 14th century and argue that, despite the years separating us from these reflections, such historical arguments around painting are still relevant. Only now, what was once considered to be painting´s strength — its ability to produce a sense of liveliness or subjectivity — takes on a different meaning in an economy that considers exactly those qualities to be its resources.

Isabelle Graw is Professor for Art Theory and Art History at Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste (Städelschule), Frankfurt am Main, where she co-founded the Institute of Art Criticism. She is an art critic and co-founder of Texte zur Kunst in Berlin.

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

 

Wish You Were Here: Groucho Marx

Thursday, June 11, 6:30pm

Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, will speak with Groucho Marx, as portrayed by writer and performer Noah Diamond. The evening will offer an interactive component, integrating questions and comments from Twitter and other social media platforms received in advance. Over a period of two years, Hoffmann is interviewing the subjects of Andy Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (1980), interpreted by prominent experts, as if each were coming to the Museum to have a conversation in the present day. 

Highly regarded curator Jens Hoffmann joined The Jewish Museum in a newly created position as Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs in November 2012. Hoffmann is conceptualizing ideas and strategies for exhibitions, acquisitions, publications, research, and public programs, drawing on his global perspective and deep knowledge of contemporary art and visual culture. Formerly Director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco from 2007 to 2012 and Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London between 2003 and 2007, Hoffmann has organized more than 40 shows internationally since the late 1990s. Hoffmann is known for applying a multi-disciplinary approach to his curatorial practice.

A performer, playwright, songwriter and cartoonist, Noah Diamond is a lifelong devotee of the Marx Brothers.  He reconstructed and adapted I’ll Say She Is, a lost 1924 musical that was the Broadway debut of the Marx Brothers.  I’ll Say She Is was staged at the 2014 Marxfest and New York International Fringe Festival, and featured Diamond as Groucho Marx in a performance that Time Out New York called “uncanny and hilarious.”  Diamond is also the author of the webcomic Love Marches On and political satires for the Nero Fiddled theater company.

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

 

This Is How We Do It – On Laurie Simmons and Chantal Joffe

Tuesday, June 23, 2:00pm

Kelly Taxter, Assistant Curator, speaks about organizing Laurie Simmons: How We See and Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Chantal Joffe.

Laurie Simmons: How We See, a series of recent, large-scale photographs by artist Laurie Simmons, is on view through August 16, 2015. The six new works draw upon the "Doll Girls" community, people who alter themselves to look like Barbie, baby dolls, and Japanese anime characters through make-up, dress, and even cosmetic surgery. Evoking the tradition of the high-school portrait - when teenagers present their idealized selves to the camera - Simmons photographed fashion models seated in front of a curtain, cropped from the shoulders down. Despite the banal pose, each portrait is activated by kaleidoscopic lighting and small, surprising details that produce a nearly psychedelic effect. The models have preternaturally large, sparkling eyes that are painted on their closed lids, a well-known Doll Girls technique, and stare out at the visitor with an uncanny, alien gaze. How We See draws an arc between portraits traded among classmates and the persona-play that "Doll Girls" rapidly execute on smartphones, where continuous feeds of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter allow alternate versions of the self to appear, morph, and disappear. Simmons has a longstanding interest in masking and disguises, and in these works probes the ever-widening gap between real life and the eerie artificiality enabled by social media.

Two walls of the Jewish Museum's lobby are filled with 34 new portraits by the London-based painter Chantal Joffe. This body of work explores Jewish women of the twentieth century, focusing on those who made major contributions to art, literature, philosophy, and politics - including Diane Arbus, Nancy Spero, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Susan Sontag, and Hannah Arendt. Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Chantal Joffe is on view through October 27, 2015.

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 Museum Admission - RSVP Recommended

 

Writers and Artists Respond: Sarah Crowner and Hank Willis Thomas

Thursday, June 25, 6:30pm

Artists Sarah Crowner and Hank Willis Thomas speak about their work in the context of the exhibition Repetition and Difference, in a conversation with Daniel S. Palmer, Leon Levy Assistant Curator.  This program continues the series Writers and Artists Respond, thought-provoking discussions and performances led by artists, musicians, and writers in the Museum's galleries.

Sarah Crowner’s artworks investigate the boundaries between the decorative and fine arts. Crowner has been inspired equally by hard-edge geometric abstraction—quintessential high art—and commonplace patterned fabrics created anonymously or commercially, without the exceptional authorial gesture we associate with the visionary artist.  Her work has been featured extensively in group and solo exhibitions in institutions including The Walker Art Center; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; Kunstverein, Amsterdam; WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; and The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, among numerous other public and private venues internationally.

Hank Willis Thomas is a photo conceptual artist working primarily with themes related to identity, history and popular culture. Thomas’ monograph, Pitch Blackness, was published by Aperture. He has exhibited throughout the U.S. and abroad including the International Center of Photography; Galerie Michel Rein, Paris; Studio Museum in Harlem; Galerie Henrik Springmann, Berlin; and the Baltimore Museum of Art, among others. Thomas’ work is in numerous public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Guggenheim Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Brooklyn Museum; The High Museum of Art, Atlanta; and the National Gallery of Art,  Washington DC. His collaborative projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and installed publicly at the Oakland International Airport, The Birmingham International Airport, The Oakland Museum of California, and the University of California, San Francisco. He was recently appointed to the Public Design Commission of the City of New York.

Repetition and Difference explores how artists throughout history have commonly employed repetition - artworks in series, multiples, and copies - for reasons ranging from the commercial to the subversive. On view at the Jewish Museum through August 16, 2015, Repetition and Difference features over 350 historic objects from the collection and recent works by contemporary artists, demonstrating how subtle disruptions in form, color, or design can reveal intriguing information about their creation and meaning. Large groups of seemingly identical objects, including silver coins struck in ancient Lebanon and 19th-century Iranian marriage contracts, are juxtaposed with recent works by emerging and established international artists Walead Beshty, Sarah Crowner, Abraham Cruzvillegas, N. Dash, John Houck, Koo Jeong A, Kris Martin, Amalia Pica, and Hank Willis Thomas.

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

 

The Wind Up: Revolution of the Eye

Thursday, June 25, 8-11pm

The Museum's after-hours series featuring art making, live performance, and gallery tours celebrates the visual power and cultural impact of television on view in Revolution of the Eye. Activities include Op Art-inspired screen-printing, an opening set by DJ Louie XIV and headlining set by up and coming Brooklyn-based band Mainland. Open bar with beer and wine.

From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, the pioneers of American television - many of them young, Jewish, and aesthetically adventurous - adopted modernism as a source of inspiration. Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television looks at how the dynamic new medium, in its risk-taking and aesthetic experimentation, paralleled and embraced cutting-edge art and design. Highlighting the visual revolution ushered in by American television and modernist art and design of the 1950s and 1960s, the exhibition features over 260 art objects, artifacts, and clips. Fine art and graphic design, including works by Saul Bass, Marcel Duchamp, Roy Lichtenstein, Man Ray, , Georgia O'Keefe, and Andy Warhol, as well as ephemera, television memorabilia, and clips from film and television, including Batman, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Ernie Kovacs Show, Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, and The Twilight Zone are on view. Revolution of the Eye also examines television's promotion of avant-garde ideals and aesthetics; its facility as a promotional platform for modern artists, designers, and critics; its role as a committed patron of the work of modern artists and designers.  Revolution of the Eye is on view through September 27, 2015.

Tickets: $13 Advance; $18 Day of Event

 

A Closer Look Gallery Talks

Mondays, June 1, 8, 15, 22, and 29, 1:00pm

Educators and curators engage visitors in discussions about select works of art in Repetition and Difference on June 1, 15, and 29; and in Masterpieces & Curiosities: Nicole Eisenman's Seder on June 8 and22.

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, the late 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. Wish You Were Here has been funded by a donation from Lorraine and Martin Beitler who gifted Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century to the Jewish Museum in 2006.

Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.