March 2015 Programs at
the Jewish Museum
Feature Artist Nicole Eisenman,
a Conversation with Sarah Bernhardt,
and More

New York, NY - The Jewish Museum's 2015 slate of lectures, discussions, and events continues in March with Wish You Were Here, a discussion between Jens Hoffmann, The Jewish Museum's Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, and Sarah Bernhardt, as presented by curator Carol Ockman.  Other highlights include artist Nicole Eisenman discussing her painting, Seder, on view at the Museum; lectures by Jewish Museum curator Susan Braunstein, scholar Deborah Dash Moore, and journalist Lucette Lagnado; and a screening of the documentary, Advanced Style.

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 – MARCH 2015

Film Screening: Advanced Style

Tuesday, March 3, 6:30 pm

The new documentary Advanced Style examines the lives of seven unique New Yorkers whose eclectic personal style and vital spirit have guided their approach to aging. Based on Ari Seth Cohen's famed blog of the same name and directed by Lina Plioplyte, this film paints intimate and colorful portraits of independent, stylish women aged 62 to 95 who are challenging conventional ideas about beauty, aging, and Western's culture's increasing obsession with youth.  A Q&A with Ari Seth Cohen and two women featured in Advanced Style, Lynn Dell Cohen and Tziporah Salamon, will follow the screening. The film is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power.

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.

Tickets: $12 adults; $8 students and seniors; $5 Jewish Museum members

 

Lecture: The Liberating Lens: Jewish Photographers Picture the Modern World

With Deborah Dash Moore

The James L. Weinberg Distinguished Lecture

Thursday, March 5, 6:30pm

In the middle decades of the 20th century, Jews turned to photography in large numbers as a way to earn a living, a means of self-expression, a form of political activism, and a mode of artistic creativity. In this lecture, Professor Deborah Dash Moore looks at the liberating power of the camera. What did Jewish Americans see when they pictured the modern world? How did photography offer them freedom? Through examples by photographers such as Nan Goldin, Garry Winogrand, and Bruce Davidson, this talk will consider the camera’s appeal for so many Jews of the midcentury.

Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of History, and Director, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan. An historian of American Jews, she focuses on the twentieth century and the urban experience.  She is the author of GI Jews: How World War II Changed a Generation, Gender and Jewish History (with Marion Kaplan) and American Jewish Identity Politics, and the recipient of the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award from The Foundation for Jewish Culture.

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

 

Author Talk: Lucette Lagnado

Monday, March 16, 11:30am

Scheuer Auditorium

Celebrated writer Lucette Lagnado returns to the Museum to share her recent research on the Jews of Tunisia.  She will focus on the shrinking  Jewish community of the nation’s capital, Tunis, and the more stable, even flourishing, population in the city of Djerba, two contrasting worlds in one Arab country.  Lagnado is the author of the memoirs The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn.  Lagnado is the author of the memoirs The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn.

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

 

Wish You Were Here:  Sarah Bernhardt

Thursday, March 19, 6:30pm

Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, will speak with Sarah Bernhardt, as presented by scholar and curator Carol Ockman. The evening will offer an interactive component to integrate questions and comments from Twitter and other social media platforms received in advance of each talk. Over the next two years, Hoffmann will interview 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.

Carol Ockman is Professor of Art, Williams College, and has worked on numerous exhibitions, including Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama, held at the Jewish Museum in 2005.  She is currently working on Sarah Bernhardt’s Handkerchief, a book that grows out of the exhibition (and an accompanying live performance with Lynn Cohen, Lauren Flanigan, Cherry Jones, Ellen Lauren, and Debra Winger) that will tell the story of a handkerchief that Bernhardt passed on to a great lady of the American theatre, and its subsequent transmission from Helen Hayes to Julie Harris to Cherry Jones.

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

 

Writers and Artists Respond – Nicole Eisenman

Thursday, March 26, 6:30pm

Artist Nicole Eisenman speaks with Joanna Montoya Robotham, Neubauer Family Foundation Assistant Curator, about Seder (2010), the latest featured work in the Museum’s Masterpieces & Curiosities exhibition series. This continues the series Writers and Artists Respond, thought-provoking discussions and performances led by artists, musicians, and writers in the Museum's exhibition galleries.

Nicole Eisenman was born in Verdun, France, and received her bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2005 she and the photographer A. L. Steiner cofounded Ridykeulous, an artist-run collective that focuses primarily on queer and feminist art and produces exhibitions, performances, and publications. She was awarded the Carnegie Prize in 2013. Eisenman lives and works in New York.

Showcasing a painting commissioned by the Jewish Museum in 2010, Masterpieces & Curiosities: Nicole Eisenman's Seder continues a series of exhibitions focused on individual works in the Museum's world-renowned collection. On view from March 13 to August 9, 2015, this exhibition presents Eisenman's painting Seder with over 25 seldom seen yet important portraits by such artists as Jules Pascin, Theresa Bernstein, Raphael and Moses Soyer, and Edouard Vuillard that help illuminate her painterly approach and chosen subject. The diverse breadth of techniques and styles used in these works will demonstrate how Eisenman looks to the past as inspiration for her unique narratives of 21st century life. Also included is a selection of Passover Seder plates from the Museum's collection, ranging from the 18th to 21st centuries.  The fourth show in the Masterpieces & Curiosities series, Nicole Eisenman's Seder differs from previous installations. Rather than analyze the content and subjects of the painting, the exhibition will look at the connections between this contemporary work and the portraits. These paintings represent different time periods, places, and styles, while also revealing the continuous exploration and evolution of Jewish identity. They detail the political and social history of the past hundred years through the portrayal of individuals ranging from the aristocrat to the anonymous burgher to the artist. Through this varied display of artworks in dialogue, Seder can be seen as responding to and advancing a storied visual and material tradition of Jewish culture.

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

 

The Lines of Distinction Lecture: Susan L. Braunstein

Tuesday, March 31, 11:30am

Susan L. Braunstein speaks about the Judaica objects included in Repetition and Difference, which gathers seemingly identical works from the Museum’s collection to examine how differences and derivations can reveal significant meanings about artistic production, social issues, and prevailing political conditions.

Susan L. Braunstein was appointed the Henry J. Leir Curator at the Jewish Museum in 2012. She is primarily responsible for the collections of historical and contemporary Judaica, antiquities and numismatics. She joined the staff in 1980 as a Research Associate after working at the Brooklyn Museum in the Department of Egyptian, Classical and Near Eastern Art. Dr. Braunstein has created numerous exhibitions for the Jewish Museum, including Israel in Antiquity: From David to Herod (1982); Jewish Life in Czarist Russia: A World Rediscovered (1994); The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mysteries of the Ancient World (2008); and As it were, So to speak: a Museum Collection in Dialogue with Barbara Bloom (2013). Her specialties include the archaeology of Israel and Hanukkah lamps; in 2004 she published a catalogue of the Museum’s entire collection of 1,022 Hanukkah lamps. Dr. Braunstein has a PhD in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University.​

Artists throughout history have commonly employed repetition - artworks in series, multiples, and copies - for reasons ranging from the commercial to the subversive, while the value placed on repetitions in comparison with "original" works has varied widely. On view at the Jewish Museum from March 13 to August 9, 2015, Repetition and Difference explores these concepts through 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, will be 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.  

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

 

A Closer Look Gallery Talks

Mondays, March 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30, 1:00pm

Educators and curators engage visitors in discussions about select works of art in Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power, on March 2, 9, and 16; in Repetition and Difference on March 23; and in Laurie Simmons: How We See on March 30.

The Jewish Museum will present a series of recent photographs by artist Laurie Simmons, on view from March 13 to August 9, 2015. The seven new works in Laurie Simmons: How We See draw upon the "Doll Girls" community, women who alter themselves to look like Barbie, baby dolls, and Japanese Anime characters through make-up, dress, and even cosmetic surgery. Simmons goes beyond the disturbing questions raised by the "Doll Girls" community to explore notions of beauty, identity, and persona. Her longstanding interest in masking and disguises here extends to social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, where alternative versions of the self can quickly appear, morph, and be erased. How We See likens this persona-play to high-tech dress-up, and investigates the way individuality is reassembled through the distorted lens of idealized beauty.

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.  Wish You Were Here has been funded by a generous donation from Lorraine Beitler, Ed.D and Martin Beitler, Esq.  Public support is provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.