The Jewish Museum has launched new audio tours that will illuminate works of art from the Museum’s collection, highlight a range of perspectives, and provide an engaging experience for visitors of all backgrounds. Tours feature the voices of contemporary artists Maira Kalman, Isaac Mizrahi, Arlene Shechet, and Kehinde Wiley; curators and rabbis discussing Jewish traditions and rituals through ceremonial objects; students talking about art; verbal descriptions for visitors who are blind or have low vision; and a podcast-style conversation between artists Ross Bleckner and Deborah Kass discussing their work in the context of Jewish identity and LGBTQ+ history.

The Jewish Museum presents Personas: George Segal’s Abraham and Isaac, an installation of the life-sized plaster sculpture by American artist George Segal (American, 1924–2000), being shown at the Museum for the first time. The artist adapted the biblical story of Abraham, who was commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac as proof of his obedience and faith in God, as an allegory for the 1970 tragedy at Kent State University in Ohio. During the incident, National Guardsmen, who were ordered to control an escalated anti-Vietnam protest, shot and killed four students, wounding nine others. 

The Jewish Museum will present Television and Beyond: Workplace Encounters, featuring a selection of television clips exploring interactions in the workplace from classics such as The West Wing and contemporary programs like Atlanta and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. One of seven sections that make up the Jewish Museum’s third floor collection exhibition, Scenes from the Collection, “Television and Beyond” draws inspiration from the Museum’s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting.

Bang on a Can and the Jewish Museum’s 2019-2020 concert season, pairing innovative music with the Museum’s exhibitions, begins on Thursday, July 11, 2019 at 7:30pm. The Young People’s Chorus of New York City (YPC), founded and directed by Francisco J. Núñez, perform a concert that will include songs and poems by Leonard Cohen and others, coinciding with the Jewish Museum’s exhibition, Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything. Recognized throughout New York City and internationally as one of the leading and most diverse children’s choirs, YPC is a longtime and frequent collaborator with Bang on a Can. The chorus has forged a unique presence in the city’s music community both as a champion commissioner and performer of new works by today’s leading composers and for its innovative vocal arrangements that consistently cross all musical borders.

Now celebrating its 41st year, the annual Museum Mile Festival takes place rain or shine on Tuesday, June 11, 2019, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm.  Over 1.5 million people have taken part in this annual celebration since its inception. Festival attendees can walk the Mile on Fifth Avenue between 82nd Street and 110th Street while visiting eight of New York City’s finest cultural institutions, which are open free to the public throughout the evening. The Museum Mile Festival’s opening ceremony takes place at 5:45 pm at El Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue at 105th Street. Traditionally, the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and other city and state dignitaries open the Festival. 

The Jewish Museum will present Rachel Feinstein: Maiden, Mother, Crone, the first survey of the New York-based artist in the United States, from November 1, 2019 through March 22, 2020. Three decades of Feinstein’s work in sculpture, installation, painting, drawing, and video, as well as a newly commissioned wall-relief, a panoramic wallpaper, and the artist’s sculptural maquettes will be brought together to emphasize her fascination with the dualistic nature of cultural expression and everyday life, how fundamental yet oppositional concepts coexist and are ceaselessly negotiated in art and the construction of identity. From Feinstein’s earliest to her most recent works, female figures and protagonists dominate — a distinguishing feature of both the artist’s practice and this exhibition. Feinstein probes how notions of “the feminine” manifest in the popular imagination, an investigation that pulses through and binds together Maiden, Mother, Crone.

In conjunction with the exhibition Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, the Jewish Museum will present a series of public programs including an authors roundtable; a participatory performance with Choir!Choir!Choir!; cantors performing covers of Cohen songs; performances by Meredith Monk and The Young People’s Chorus of New York City, both presented by Bang on a Can; and adult studio workshops.

The Jewish Museum will present Israeli-American pianist Daniel Gortler and Brazilian violinist Daniel Guedes performing the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, Edvard Grieg, and contemporary Brazilian composer Mozart Camargo Guarnieri on Thursday, May 16 at 8 pm.  This is Mr. Gortler’s fifth appearance at the Jewish Museum, and Mr. Guedes’s first.

Bang on a Can and the Jewish Museum’s 2018-2019 concert season, pairing innovative music with the Museum’s exhibitions and showcasing leading female performers and composers, continues on Thursday, May 23, 2019 at 8pm. Recognized as one of the most unique and influential artists of our time, composer/performer Meredith Monk (voice and keyboard) offers one of her more rare, intimate concerts in her premiere at the Jewish Museum, with renowned members of her Vocal Ensemble, Katie Geissinger (voice) and Allison Sniffin (voice, violin and keyboard). A long-time and frequent collaborator with Bang on a Can, Monk has been hailed as “a magician of the voice” and “one of America’s coolest composers.” This performance reflects Monk’s six decades of innovation and awe-inspiring vocal mastery, mining the depths of the myriad possibilities of the human voice, and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything.

The Jewish Museum presents The Gift: Works from the Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Collection, the first in a series of exhibitions drawn from the Foundation’s donation of artworks to the Jewish Museum.

The Jewish Museum will present Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything, a contemporary art exhibition devoted to the imagination and legacy of the influential singer/songwriter, man of letters, and global icon from Montreal, Canada. The exhibition will be on view from April 12 through September 8, 2019. Organized by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC), where it debuted, the exhibition is curated by John Zeppetelli, Director and Chief Curator at the MAC, and Victor Shiffman, Co-Curator. Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything will embark on a tour, with the Jewish Museum as its first stop. Following its New York presentation, the exhibition will travel to Copenhagen and San Francisco.

The Jewish Museum will present Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art, the first exhibition to explore the remarkable career of Edith Halpert (1900-1970), the influential American art dealer and founder of the Downtown Gallery in New York City. A pioneer in the field and the first significant female gallerist in the United States, Halpert propelled American art to the fore at a time when the European avant-garde still enthralled the world. The artists she supported — Stuart Davis, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Ben Shahn, and Charles Sheeler key among them — became icons of American modernism. Halpert also brought vital attention to overlooked nineteenth-century American artists, such as William Michael Harnett, Edward Hicks, and Raphaelle Peale, as well as little-known and anonymous folk artists. With her revolutionary program at the Downtown Gallery, Halpert inspired generations of Americans to value the art of their own country, in their own time.