The Television Project
Highlights from the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting Debuts September 25, 2015

New York, NY – With a new, ongoing exhibition series called The Television Project, the Jewish Museum will introduce visitors to a dynamic part of its collection: the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB), the largest and most comprehensive body of broadcast materials on 20th century Jewish culture in the United States. The inaugural exhibition, The Television Project: Picturing a People, on view at the Jewish Museum from September 25, 2015 through February 14, 2016, will feature artistically significant program excerpts celebrating the brilliance of writing, directing, performance, and production in American television, as well as related works of art, artifacts, and ephemera. Picturing a People will include clips from the following programs: The Ed Sullivan Show, Northern Exposure, The Twilight Zone, The Goldbergs, The Simpsons, My Name is Barbra, and Eichmann Trial Coverage (ABC News).

Six thematic exhibitions will be presented from 2015 to 2018. Each exhibition will feature a compilation video by curator Maurice Berger. Since the mid-1990s, Berger has produced cinematic “culture stories,” syncopated compilations of historic clips from American film and television that explore issues of identity and self-representation. His compilation, Threshold, was featured in the 2012 Whitney Biennial. For The Television Project, Berger will assemble clips from the NJAB, examining issues of Jewish identity and culture as depicted on American television.

Future exhibitions in the series will examine anti-Semitism, Jews and the advertising revolution, and other subjects, each through the lens of American television.

Inaugural Exhibition: The Television Project: Picturing a People

Highlights of The Television Project: Picturing a People include: Barbra Streisand performing “Happy Days are Here Again” as part of her visually innovative first television special; a clip from The Twilight Zone featuring Dennis Hopper as a neo-Nazi inspired by the ghost of Hitler; The Simpsons, "Like Father, Like Clown," where the character Krusty the Clown reveals that he is Jewish;  Northern Exposure, “Kaddish for Uncle Manny," starring Rob Morrow as Dr. Joel Fleischman in this 90s cult hit; and ABC News coverage of the 1961 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Art on view will include Deborah Kass’s Six Blue Barbras (The Jewish Jackie Series), 1992, part of a series where the artist appropriated Andy Warhol’s techniques, colors, and compositions, and retroactively introduced Barbra Streisand to the pantheon of female celebrities portrayed by Warhol in the early 1960s; and Oliver Wasow’s Pictures of People Standing Next To Their Televisions, 2015, a slide show of found images which looks at television through the lens of people who watch it, accentuating its central, if passive, role in their lives. Also featured will be ephemera drawn from the collection of the NJAB ranging from CBS promotional playing cards featuring Jewish actors such as Jack Benny, George Burns, and Danny Kaye who appeared on the network’s shows from the 1950s to 1970s, to a paper doll set promoting actress Dinah Shore at the height of her popularity as a TV star.

Upcoming Exhibitions – The Television Project

The Television Project: Some of My Best Friends

March 18 – August 14, 2016

Some of My Best Friends will explore the full range of the medium’s approach to the issue of anti-Semitism, from the satire and humor of the situation comedy to serious dramas that dissect the origins, motivations, and consequences of prejudice. Art, artifacts, and clips from the following programs will be included: All in the Family, Downton Abbey, Gunsmoke, LA Law, Little House on the Prairie, Lou Grant, Mad Men, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Skokie.

The Television Project: Jews and the Advertising Revolution

September 16, 2016– February 12, 2017

Jews and the Advertising Revolution – which will include print advertising campaigns, ephemera, and a compilation video of television commercials from the Museum’s NJAB – will explore commercials produced for Jewish audiences, with Jewish content, or by prominent Jewish writers, designers, and artists, examining the way religion, ethnicity, and identity were played out on American television, as well as the interface between identity and concepts of modern advertising campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s. Clips from the following campaigns will be included: Alka-Seltzer, American Express, Hebrew National, IBM, Israel Tourist Board, Levy’s Rye, NYNEX, Sara Lee, Manischewitz Wine, and the United Jewish Appeal.

With more than 4,000 holdings, the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum was established in 1981 to collect, preserve, and exhibit television and radio programs related to the Jewish experience. The programs in the NJAB constitute an important record of how Jews have been portrayed and portray themselves from the 1930s to the present, and how mass media has addressed issues of diversity, ethnicity, and religion.

Maurice Berger is Research Professor and Chief Curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Consulting Curator/Curator of the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum in New York. His critically acclaimed exhibitions have appeared at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, The New Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, International Center of Photography, Addison Gallery of American Art, Berkeley Art Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum, and other national and international venues. Most recently, he curated Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, which premiered at the Jewish Museum (May 1, 2015 - September 27, 2015) and will travel to four additional U.S. venues. He is the author of twelve books, including For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Yale, 2010), Masterworks of The Jewish Museum (Yale, 2004), and White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). His honors and awards include a 2011 Emmy Award nomination from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, New York chapter, and curatorial awards from the Association of Art Museum Curators and the International Association of Art Critics. Berger’s essay series, Race Stories, “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race,” appears monthly on the Lens blog of The New York Times.

Support

The Television Project is made possible by The Knapp Family Foundation, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, and the Alfred J. Grunebaum Memorial Fund.