Release Date: April 25, 2016

May 2016 Programs at the Jewish Museum Feature Isaac Mizrahi and Mark Morris, George Gershwin, and More

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New York, NY - The Jewish Museum continues its 2016 slate of lectures, discussions, and events in May with Isaac Mizrahi, the influential American fashion designer, artist, and entrepreneur, in discussion with choreographer Mark Morris; and “George Gershwin,” as portrayed by pianist and playwright Hershey Felder, in conversation with the Jewish Museum's Jens Hoffmann.  Other highlights include artist Andrea Bowers speaking about her latest projects; a panel of young, New York-based fashion designers exploring the influence of contemporary art on their work; and a performance by musician/artist Arto Lindsay.

Further program and ticket information is available by calling 212.423.3337 or online at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar.  All programs are at the Jewish Museum, Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan, unless otherwise indicated.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE – MAY 2016

AM at the JM: Andrea Bowers
Wednesday, May 4, 8am at Think Coffee, Union Square, 123 Fourth Ave, NYC
Artist Andrea Bowers will discuss her recent projects with Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum.

Andrea Bowers (b. 1965) works across a wide variety of mediums including drawing, video, photography and sculpture. Bowers’ work references political and social activism, drawing inspiration from the language, imagery and materiality of various activist movements both historical and contemporary. Her work has been exhibited nationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, REDCAT, Los Angeles, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and internationally at the The Tate Modern, London, and Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool as well as the Gwangju Biennale, among others. Bowers' work is currently featured in Agitprop! at the Brooklyn Museum.

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.

Free


The Jewish Book Council Presents Unpacking the Book
Jewish Writers in Conversation - Jewish Writers on the Front Lines
Wednesday, May 4, 6:00pm
A century ago, the notion of a Jewish warrior would have seemed a contradiction in terms, but no longer. Two exceptional writers who have witnessed and translated the absurdity, chaos and tragedy of modern warfare in the most volatile region in the world will discuss their books.

Elliot Ackerman served five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and is the recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star for Valor, and the Purple Heart. A former White House Fellow, his essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New Republic, and Ecotone, among others. Green on Blue is his debut novel. He currently lives in Istanbul and writes on the Syrian Civil War.

Matti Friedman’s second nonfiction book, Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story, will be published by Algonquin Books in May 2016. It tells the story of a group of young Israelis assigned to hold an isolated military outpost in Lebanon. His first book, The Aleppo Codex, won the 2014 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature, the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal, and the Canadian Jewish Book Award for history, and was selected as one of Booklist’s top ten religion books of the year. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Tablet, and elsewhere. He was born in Toronto and lives in Jerusalem.

The Jewish Book Council invites the general public to join the event. Select galleries will be open for attendees from 6:00pm to 7:00pm, and guided tours of Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey will be offered at 6:10 and 6:30pm. The conversation with the authors will begin at 7:00pm and will be followed by a reception, book sale, and signing.

The program is free but space is limited and advance RSVP is required for entry. Reservations can be made at jewishbookcouncil.org/events/unpacking-the-book.


On Isaac Mizrahi: A Talk and Tour
Monday, May 9, 10:30am
At 92Y and the Jewish Museum
Throughout his career, Isaac Mizrahi has melded high and low culture, cross-pollinated art forms, and mined his upbringing for inspiration. Kelly Taxter, Assistant Curator, speaks at 92Y about the process of putting together this expansive exhibition, followed by a tour of Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History at the Jewish Museum.

Tickets: $35 general; $20 Jewish Museum and 92Y members


Bang on a Can: Performance by Arto Lindsay
Thursday, May 12, 7:30pm
Bang on a Can and the Jewish Museum are presenting a performance by Arto Lindsay in conjunction with the Museum’s exhibition Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist. Lindsay’s program, which will be announced from the stage, will include music that echoes themes of cultural experimentation and cross-pollination, drawing on elements from American and Brazilian rock, pop, experimental music, and improvisation.

Arto Lindsay (b. 1953) has stood at the intersection of music and art for more than four decades. As a member of DNA, he contributed to the foundation of No Wave. As bandleader for the Ambitious Lovers, he developed an intensely subversive pop music, a hybrid of American and Brazilian styles. Throughout his career, Lindsay has collaborated with both visual and musical artists, including Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Animal Collective, Matthew Barney, Caetano Veloso and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Having been involved with carnaval in Brazil for many years, in 2004 he began making parades.

From Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro to Biscayne Boulevard in Miami Beach, the innovative and prolific work of Roberto Burle Marx (1909-1994) has made him one of the most prominent landscape architects of the 20th century. Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist, on view from May 6 through September 18, 2016, is the first U.S. exhibition to showcase the full range of his rich artistic output, with nearly 140 works on view including landscape architecture, painting, sculpture, theater design, tapestries, and jewelry. Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist will demonstrate the versatility of the artist’s extraordinary talents, from his earliest forays into landscape architecture to designs for synagogues and other Jewish sites he created late in life. His global influence and legacy will also be examined through the work of a number of international contemporary artists whom he inspired including Juan Araujo, Paloma Bosquê, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Luisa Lambri, Arto Lindsay, Nick Mauss, and Beatriz Milhazes.

Tickets: $18 general; $15 students and seniors; $12 Jewish Museum and Bang on a Can List members


This Is How We Do It: Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist
Tuesday, May 17, 2:00pm

Rebecca Shaykin, Leon Levy Assistant Curator, speaks about the contemporary art featured in the Roberto Burle Marx exhibition. This program features ASL interpretation.

Free with Museum Admission - RSVP Recommended


Panel Discussion: Contemporary Fashion
Thursday, May 19, 6:30pm

The Mildred and George Weissman Program
New York-based designers Rosie Assoulin and Rachel Comey consider how contemporary art influences their work and processes. Moderated by Kelly Taxter, Assistant Curator, The Jewish Museum.

Rosie Assoulin grew up in Brooklyn and always knew that fashion was her one true love. She dedicated her time to honing her skills, initially under the tutelage of her mentor and future mother-in-law, the veteran jewelry designer, Roxanne Assoulin, at Lee Angel. After a brief stint at the Fashion Institute of Technology, she found herself at Oscar de la Renta in New York City, watching the always-elegant Mr. de la Renta drape, cut and pin his legendary designs. Later, Rosie sought out a life altering opportunity to spend time with the design studio Lanvin in Paris, where she bore witness to Alber Elbaz’s pure, unbridled creativity and unmatched design talent. Along with a few years in event and floral design, she found that every moment is an opportunity to cultivate her perspective. In late 2012, Rosie decisively turned back towards her first love, fashion, and her eponymous collection made its debut for Resort 2014. The Rosie Assoulin design aesthetic toes the line between the romantically fantastical and the reliably practical.

Rachel Comey attended the University of Vermont as an art major with a focus on sculpture, and moved to New York City to further pursue opportunities in the arts. Her earliest efforts in fashion came as costume designer for bands in the burgeoning downtown music scene, earning her a place in the 2001 Whitney Biennial.  Inspired by that same arts scene, Comey launched her first eponymous collection of menswear. By 2004 Comey had added womenswear and footwear to her expanding business. The women's collection quickly took off and developed its own grassroots following among New York's creative elite. Her collections became known for artful custom textiles, graceful modern silhouettes, and covetable footwear. Her work is said to be designed for real women, like herself, with strong opinions, big aspirations, and a view to the world that is at once radical and romantic. "Ms. Comey has long had a reputation for going her own way and for being inventive,” said Cathy Horyn in The New York Times in a feature on Comey’s Spring/Summer 2014 show.  The first Rachel Comey boutique, located at 95 Crosby Street in Soho, opened in 2014.

This program has been endowed by Paul, Ellen, and Dan Weissman in honor of their parents.

Free with Pay What You Wish Admission - RSVP Recommended


Dialogue and Discourse: Isaac Mizrahi and Mark MorrisTuesday, May 24, 6:30pm

Isaac Mizrahi speaks with his frequent collaborator and close friend, innovative choreographer Mark Morris.

Isaac Mizrahi was born in 1961 in Brooklyn, New York. Raised in a Jewish family, he attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush before transferring to New York City’s High School for the Performing Arts and then Parsons School of Design. He entered the New York fashion scene in the late 1980s; his clothing line, Isaac Mizrahi New York, debuted at Bergdorf Goodman in 1986. In 1989 he received the Perry Ellis Award for Emerging Talent and was named Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Womenswear Designer of the Year, an award he won again in 1991. Unzipped, a riotous, witty, and insightful documentary about the making of his fall 1994 collection, earned Mizrahi and the director, Douglas Keeve, the 1995 Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. When his fashion house closed in 1998, Mizrahi followed other passions in theater and dance, designing costumes and sets for Mark Morris and Twyla Tharp and winning a 2002 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design for a Broadway revival of Clare Boothe Luce’s The Women. In 2003 he was the first fashion designer to launch a line of well-designed, affordable clothes in collaboration with Target. Today he stars in Isaac Mizrahi Live!, a call-in home-shopping TV show that airs weekly on the QVC network. He also appears as a judge on Project Runway All Stars. Mizrahi has directed and narrated “Peter and the Wolf” at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, directed and designed “The Magic Flute” and “A Little Night Music” for the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and worked the red carpet at the Oscars and Golden Globe Awards. He is currently at work on a television series and memoir.

Mark Morris, hailed as the “the most successful and influential choreographer alive, and indisputably the most musical” (New York Times), founded the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980 and has since created over 150 works for the company. From 1988-1991, he was Director of Dance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, the national opera house of Belgium. In 1990, he founded the White Oak Dance Project with Mikhail Baryshnikov. Morris opened the Mark Morris Dance Center in 2001 to provide a home for his dance group, rehearsal space for the dance community, community programs for local children and seniors, and dance classes for students of all ages and abilities. He works extensively in opera, directing and choreographing at The Metropolitan Opera and The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, among others. He is also an acclaimed ballet choreographer with over twenty works commissioned by ballet companies worldwide. Isaac Mizrahi first designed costumes for Morris’ Three Preludes in 1992. The two have since collaborated on seventeen other works, including Falling Down Stairs with Yo-Yo Ma (1997) Sandpaper Ballet (1999) and Beaux (2012) for San Francisco Ballet, Gong (2001) and After You (2015) for American Ballet Theater, and evening-length operas Platée (1997), King Arthur (2006), Orfeo ed Euridice (2007), and Acis and Galatea (2015).

The Jewish Museum is presenting the first exhibition focused on Isaac Mizrahi, the influential American fashion designer, artist, and entrepreneur, through August 7, 2016.  Through over 250 works, including clothing and costume designs, sketches, photographs, and an immersive video installation, this survey exhibition explores Mizrahi’s unique position at the intersection of high style and popular culture.  While best known for his work in fashion, Mizrahi’s creativity has expanded over a three decade career to embrace acting, directing, set and costume design, writing, and cabaret performance. Beginning with his first collection in 1987 and running through the present day, Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History weaves together the many threads of Mizrahi's prolific output, juxtaposing work in fashion, film, television, and the performing arts.

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

Wish You Were Here: George Gershwin
Tuesday, May 31, 6:30pm

Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, will speak with "George Gershwin" as portrayed by pianist and playwright Hershey Felder.  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.

Hershey Felder is a Canadian pianist, actor, playwright, composer, producer, and director. He created (as playwright, actor, and pianist) the role of George Gershwin in the one-man play George Gershwin Alone.  Combining the craft of acting and concert-level piano performance, Felder followed George Gershwin Alone with performances as Frederic Chopin, Ludwig van Beethoven, Leonard Bernstein, Franz Liszt, and Irving Berlin. Felder’s original composition Noah’s Ark, An Opera has been performed with members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. American Theatre Magazine called Felder as a "one-man cottage industry" for his work recreating music and lives of the great composers.

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


Gallery Talks
Fridays, May 6, 13, and 20, 2:00pm

45-minute gallery discussions on specific themes and topics in current exhibitions, led by members of the Education Department.

Friday, May 6
Isaac Mizrahi: An Unruly History
Isaac Mizrahi and Maira Kalman: A Collaboration

Viktorya Vilk, Assistant Manager of Gallery Programs

Friday, May 13
Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist
Spiritual Modernism

Chris Gartrell, Senior Coordinator of Adult Programs

Friday, May 20
Roberto Burle Marx: Brazilian Modernist
The Abstract Landscape

Jenna Weiss, Manager of Public Programs

Free with Museum Admission – RSVP Recommended

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.

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