December 2015 Programs at the Jewish Museum Feature Soprano Lauren Flanigan, Authors Jami Attenberg and Anne Roiphe, and More

New York, NY - The Jewish Museum's fall 2015 slate of lectures, discussions, and events continues in December with a concert featuring acclaimed pianist Daniel Gortler and vocalists Lauren Flanigan and David Adam Moore; a literary evening with novelists Jami Attenberg and Anne Roiphe; and a behind-the-scenes look at the exhibition, Masterpieces & Curiosities: Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage.

Further program and ticket information is available by calling 212.423.3337 or online at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar.  The Jewish Museum is located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, Manhattan.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE – DECEMBER 2015

The Power of Pictures Talkback

John MacKay

Thursday, December 3, 5:30pm

John MacKay, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Film and Media Studies, Yale University, leads a discussion following a screening of Storm over Asia. (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928, 125 min)

From early vanguard constructivist works by Alexander Rodchenko and El Lissitzky, to the modernist images of Arkady Shaikhet and Max Penson, Soviet photographers played a pivotal role in the history of modern photography. The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film, on view through February 7, 2016, examines how photography, film, and poster art were harnessed to disseminate Communist ideology, revisiting a moment in history when artists acted as engines of social change and radical political engagement from the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution through the 1930s.

Free with Museum Admission; RSVP Recommended

A Closer Look Gallery Talk

Tuesday, December 7, 1:30pm

Educators engage visitors in discussions about select works of art in Unorthodox.

Unorthodox is a large-scale group exhibition featuring 55 contemporary artists from around the world whose practices mix forms and genres without concern for artistic conventions. Though the artists in Unorthodox come from a wide variety of backgrounds and generations, they are united in their spirit of independence and individuality. Through over 200 works, the exhibition highlights the importance of iconoclasm and art's key role in breaking rules and traditions.

Free with Museum Admission

This Is How We Do It: Masterpieces & Curiosities:  Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage

Tuesday, December 8, 2pm

Rebecca Shaykin, Leon Levy Assistant Curator, the Jewish Museum, will speak about the process of organizing Masterpieces & Curiosities: Alfred Stieglitz’s The Steerage. She will be joined by William Roka, Operations Assistant at the South Street Seaport Museum and an independent scholar whose research focuses on the history of transatlantic travel and ocean liners in the early 20th century. 

Showcasing an acclaimed work by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Masterpieces & Curiosities: Alfred Stieglitz's The Steerage continues a series of exhibitions focused on individual works in the Jewish Museum’s world-renowned collection. On view through February 14, 2016, this exhibition focuses on Stieglitz’s enduring 1907 photogravure of steerage-class passengers aboard the ocean liner Kaiser Wilhelm II. This much-reproduced image has often been regarded as evidence of the poor conditions under which many immigrants arrived in America, but in fact was taken on a voyage from the United States to Europe. As such, it is a document of people who were likely denied entry and citizenship to the United States. Stieglitz's concerns, however, were largely aesthetic rather than social-minded: he was moved more by the picture's formal qualities than its subject matter. Stieglitz considered the work to be his greatest triumph in a long, illustrious career as a photographer, stating later in life, "If all my photographs were lost, and I’d be represented by just one, The Steerage, I’d be satisfied."

Free with Museum Admission, RSVP Recommended

Concert: The Word: Spoken, Sung, and Played

Daniel Gortler, Lauren Flanigan, David Adam Moore

Thursday, December 10, 7:30pm

In this chamber music concert, acclaimed Israeli pianist Daniel Gortler with internationally renowned vocalists Lauren Flanigan and David Adam Moore will present a performance of Brahms's Die schöne Magelone, Luciano Berio’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” from Epifanie, and Franz Schubert’s Three Piano Pieces for solo piano.

A highly regarded Schumann interpreter, Daniel Gortler’s latest recording of Robert Schumann piano solo works was released as a double CD album on Romeo Records and has received enthusiastic critical reviews. Daniel Gortler has performed as soloist with orchestras around the world. In addition, he has also performed with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra as well as all other orchestras in his home country of Israel. Recent highlights include his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, a debut-recital at Wigmore Hall in London and tours in South Korea, Japan, and Turkey.  In the United States, Gortler has performed recitals at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Symphony Space in New York, Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the 92nd Street Y, the Morgan Library, New York University, and Rockefeller University.

Soprano Lauren Flanigan has enjoyed a 30-year career that includes performances at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Glyndebourne, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and New York City Opera. She has been featured in ten world premieres, eleven CDs, five Live from Lincoln Center telecasts, one major motion picture, and has received 15 awards for her musical and humanitarian work.  She has been featured on Live from Lincoln Center in performances of I Lombardi (opposite Luciano Pavarotti), The Richard Tucker Gala, Lizzie Borden, and Central Park, which was written for her. In 2002, Carnegie Hall commissioned composer Phillip Glass to write Symphony No. 6, Plutonian Ode for Lauren. In 2009 she was diagnosed with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL), Meniere’s disease and a neuro processing disorder affecting her balance and her ability to match pitch. In 2010 she curtailed her active performing career and founded Music and Mentoring House, a not-for-profit organization providing hands-on mentoring and full room and board to students studying in the arts in New York City. After a long struggle to better understand her disability and get back onstage, she opened Florida Grand Opera’s 2013 season as Christine in Morning Becomes Electra. This year she sang her first Tosca.

David Adam Moore is a highly sought-after leading baritone by major opera houses and orchestras worldwide. His performances have been broadcast on BBC, Arte television, NPR, Radio France, RAI, and Radio Netherlands, and recorded by BMG, GPR, and Innova records. With a repertoire of over 50 principal roles, he is best known for his portrayals of Billy Budd, Don Giovanni, Eugene Onegin, Rossini’s Figaro, Papageno, DeRocher in Dead Man Walking, Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, Prior Walter in Angels in America, Zurga in The Pearl Fishers, Schubert’s Winterreise, Carmina Burana, and the Soldier in David T. Little’s Soldier Songs, which Moore premiered and recorded. He is also a celebrated interpreter of German lieder. Future engagements include a leading role in the world premiere of Thomas Adès’ The Exterminating Angel with the Salzburger Festspiele that he will repeat in his Metropolitan Opera debut, a role debut as Ford in Falstaff at Arizona Opera, and a return to the title role in Dead Man Walking at Lyric Opera of Kansas City.

Tickets: $24 general; $18 students and seniors; $14 Jewish Museum members

Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation Short Fiction Contest Presents:

A Literary Evening with Jami Attenberg

Thursday, December 17, 7:00pm

Jami Attenberg, best-selling author of Saint Mazie and The Middlesteins, discusses the craft of writing fiction and other topics with novelist and essayist Anne Roiphe. In addition, the winners of the annual Moment Magazine-Karma Foundation Short Fiction Contest will read from their stories.

Jami Attenberg has written about sex, technology, design, books, television, and urban life for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, Vogue, New York Magazine, and Elle, among others. She has contributed to numerous anthologies and also wrote Wicked: The Musical: A Pop-up Compendium.  Attenberg’s debut collection of short stories, Instant Love, was published in 2006, and she is the author of the novels, The Kept Man and The Melting Season.  The Middlesteins, published in 2012, was on The New York Times bestsellers list, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the St. Francis College Literary Prize. Saint Mazie, published this year, was selected as a Spotlight Pick of the Month by Amazon.  She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Writer, essayist, and journalist Anne Roiphe is known for such novels as Up the Sandbox, 1185 Park Avenue, and Lovingkindness; and for her memoirs, Art and Madness and Epilogue. In addition to her eighteen fiction and non-fiction books, she has written articles for The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, and Elle, among others, and for many years she was a columnist for The New York Observer and for The Jerusalem Report. Her book Fruitful was a finalist for the National Book Award.

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

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.