The Jewish Museum launches its winter/spring 2018 season of family programs in January with an array of concerts, art workshops, and more. The concert line-up for the year kicks off with David Weinstone and the Music for Aardvarks Band on January 21.  Among other programs on the schedule are The Paper Bag Players on March 11, the annual Freedom Art Jam Art & Dance Party on March 25; drop-in art workshops; and family art activities.

The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center announce the complete lineup for the 27th annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF), January 10-23, 2018. Among the oldest and most influential Jewish film festivals worldwide, the NYJFF each year presents the finest documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the diverse Jewish experience. Featuring new work by fresh voices in international cinema as well as restored classics, the festival’s 2018 lineup includes 37 wide-ranging and exciting features and shorts from the iconic to the iconoclastic, of which 25 are screening in their world, U.S., and New York premieres.

Claudia Gould, Helen Goldsmith Menschel Director, The Jewish Museum, announced today that Darsie Alexander will become the Jewish Museum’s Susan and Elihu Rose Chief Curator. Ms. Alexander has previously held curator roles at the Walker Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, and is currently Executive Director of the Katonah Museum of Art. The accomplished curator and museum director will begin her new role on March 20, 2018.

The Jewish Museum presents Math Bass: Crowd Rehearsal, on view in the Museum’s Skirball Lobby from November 2, 2017 through April 22, 2018. Los Angeles-based artist Math Bass (b. 1981) works across video and performance as well as painting and sculpture, which she executes in a distinctly graphic style. In her installation Crowd Rehearsal, a svelte, ladderlike sculpture draped with a coatlike painting is set against two canvases with nearly identical imagery. The title and forms suggest but do not show human bodies and actions.  

Singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb will perform two concerts for families on Sunday, October 22 at the Jewish Museum, at 11:30 am and at 2:00 pm. The Los Angeles-based mother of two is making her debut at the Jewish Museum, and will play songs from her kids’ albums Catch the Moon, Nursery Rhyme Parade!, and Parents’ Choice Gold Award winner Feel What U Feel, and other catchy pop melodies.

Bang on a Can and the Jewish Museum’s 2017-18 concert season, which focuses on pioneering female artists, continues on November 9 with a performance by La Mar Enfortuna. Sensuous and lyrical, La Mar Enfortuna is a modern exploration of lost and forgotten Sephardic melodies, creatively arranged and performed in various languages including Arabic and Spanish. Long-time collaborators Jennifer Charles and Oren Bloedow, known also as the core of the acclaimed NY-based band Elysian Fields, lead an all-star cast on modern and ancient instruments, incorporating the sounds of jazz, folk, Middle Eastern, and Latin music. The performance is presented in conjunction with Modigliani Unmasked, the Jewish Museum’s current exhibition of early drawings by Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)—many of which are being shown for the first time in the United States.

A sumptuous array of apparel from over 20 countries on four continents will be on display at the Jewish Museum from November 3, 2017 through March 18, 2018, offering an exceptional opportunity for American audiences to view many facets of Jewish identity and culture through rarely seen garments. Veiled Meanings: Fashioning Jewish Dress, from the Collection of The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition drawn from The Israel Museum’s world-renowned collection of Jewish costumes, showcases over 100 articles of clothing from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, presented as complete ensembles or as stand-alone items. The exhibition is organized by The Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb will perform a concert for families on Sunday, October 22 at 11:30 am at the Jewish Museum. The Los Angeles-based mother of two makes her debut at the Jewish Museum, and will play songs from her albums kids’ albums Catch the Moon, Nursery Rhyme Parade!, and Parents’ Choice Gold Award winner Feel What U Feel, and other catchy pop melodies.

Author Francine Klagsbrun will speak about her new book, Lioness: Golda Meir and the Nation of Israel (Schocken Books, 2017), at the Jewish Museum on October 19 at 6:30 pm in a program co-presented with The Jewish Week. Klagsbrun's superbly researched and masterly recounted story of Israel's founding mother is the definitive biography of Golda Meir, the iron-willed leader and political operative who became the fourth prime minister of Israel and one of the most notable women of the 20th century. Copies of Lioness will be available for purchase and signing after the event. The program will be introduced by Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher of The Jewish Week.

The Jewish Museum — open to the public for free on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath, since 2006 — will offer additional free admission days on select Jewish holidays.

The Jewish Museum’s upcoming schedule includes a diverse array of exhibitions. This fall the Museum will present an exhibition that focuses on Amedeo Modigliani’s early work, as well as the first comprehensive exhibition in the United States drawn from The Israel Museum’s world-renowned collection of Jewish costumes. In January, for the first time in 25 years, the Museum will open its new, major collection exhibition that will feature more than 650 works from antiquities to contemporary art. Finally, the spring sees the first survey in the United States of the work of Marc Camille Chaimowicz, one of the first artists to merge performance and installation art.

Bang on a Can and the Jewish Museum’s 2017-18 concert season, which will focus on pioneering female artists, begins on July 20 with a performance featuring the distinctive and exceptional indie-guitarist Kaki King. King’s performance takes place alongside the Jewish Museum’s current exhibition, Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry, the first major U.S. exhibition in over 20 years focused on the modernist painter, designer, and poet.