The Jewish Museum Presents New, Major Collection Exhibition Featuring Nearly 600 Works from Antiquities to Contemporary Art

New York, NY, January 17, 2018 – For the first time in 25 years, the  Jewish Museum has organized a major new exhibition of its  unparalleled collection. Scenes from the Collection transforms the  entire third floor with nearly 600 works from antiquities to  contemporary art, many of which are on view for the first time at the  Museum. Art and Jewish objects are shown together, affirming universal  values that are shared among people of all faiths and backgrounds.  

The Jewish Museum’s collection spans more than 4,000 years through  nearly 30,000 objects, including painting, sculpture, photography,  decorative arts, ceremonial objects, antiquities, works on paper, and  media. Viewed through a contemporary lens, the collection is a mirror of  Jewish identities past and present.  

Instead of a single narrative, Scenes from the Collection is divided into  seven different sections, or scenes, highlighting the diversity and depth  of the collection. Each one reveals the ways in which the presentation of  art and history are shaped by context and perspective. The new  installation is a powerful expression of artistic and cultural creativity as  well as a reflection of the continual evolution that is the essence of  Jewish identity. This unique mix of art and ceremonial objects speaks of  the many strands of Jewish tradition, culture, spirituality, and history.  The stories the works of art tell illuminate multiple perspectives on being  Jewish in the past and present, how Jewish culture intersects with art,  and how it is part of the larger world of global interconnections. 

The exhibition also explores the history of the Museum’s collection itself  over the more than 100 years of its existence. Key episodes in the origins  of the collection are highlighted in texts scattered through the galleries  considering what, why, and how the Museum has collected and what this  says about the changing identity of the institution, and evolving  intersections of art, Jewish culture, and world events. 

Unlike its predecessor, Culture & Continuity: The Jewish Journey (on  view from 1993 to 2017), Scenes from the Collection is flexible, with  several scenes changing annually, and one changing every six months, so  that different subjects can be examined while audiences are offered  opportunities to see as much of the collection as possible, including new  acquisitions. 

The scenes are: 

Constellations 

Some of the most powerful works in the collection are those that  express aspects of Jewish culture, history, or values, while also  reflecting universal issues of art and its relationship to society. In  “Constellations,” nearly 50 of the most significant works in the  collection are exhibited as individual gems but with thematic  connections to one another. Issues explored include transforming and  transcending tradition, cultural distinctiveness and universality, and the ever-changing nature of identity. Works by such artists as Mel Bochner,  Nicole Eisenman, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner, Camille Pissarro, Mark Rothko,  Joan Snyder, and Kehinde Wiley are included. A diverse selection of  Hanukkah lamps and other ceremonial objects drawn from the Museum’s  renowned collection—from the 3rd to the 21st centuries, and Europe,  North Africa, Asia, and the United States—are also on view.  

On view for the first time at the Jewish Museum, and in the United  States, is NOW (2015) by Chantal Akerman, her final video installation.  Projections surround the viewer with fast-moving footage of an  unidentified desert landscape. Each has a different, fragmentary  soundtrack, so that sounds overlap in an impressionistic medley. As  these sounds accumulate, and the desolate land streaks by like a  painting in time, the effect is increasingly ominous. This work will be on  view in “Constellations” through July 21, 2018. 

Travel Light (2017), a new sculpture by Arlene Schechet, is inspired by a pair of candlesticks that the artist’s grandmother brought from Belarus  in 1920, the only material objects the family possessed from where they  came from.  

Also new to the collection is ruby onyinyechi amanze’s take on the  traditional Jewish marriage contract, or ketubbah (2017). The artist’s  focus is on the diversity of the Jewish people, represented by an  ambiguous central couple with not-quite-human skin color and pattern,  and an elaborate hairstyle based on that worn by Igbo women in Nigeria,  where the artist was born. The work also explores marriage as “a  narrative of freedom within union and magic in intimacy.” 

Taxonomies 

“Taxonomies” is organized as a contemporary Wunderkammer (Cabinet  of Wonders), a historical style of display first popularized during the  Renaissance and recognized as a precursor of today’s museums. This  scene is crowded with works of art and artifacts of various origins and  materials, revealing interesting relationships between objects in the  collection. Objects on view range from Torah ornaments made from  ivory and a model of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem in a bottle to  replicas of ancient sailing ships to a spice container by Lucy Puls (2006). 

Masterpieces and Curiosities 

“Masterpieces and Curiosities” is a series of installations focusing on  single works from the Museum’s collection. The first iteration, on view  through August 5, 2018, features a bracelet of charms assembled by  Greta Perlman (1904-1975) in Theresienstadt, a camp-ghetto in the  former Czechoslovakia that housed prisoners between 1941 and 1945.  Over 140,000 Jews were deported there by the Nazis, including many  artists and writers who struggled to maintain a vibrant cultural life.  Despite horrific conditions, Perlman was able to gather the 20 charms  and badges assembled into her bracelet, each steeped in personal  memories. Intimate creations such as the bracelet gave some meaning to  the lives of inmates in the ghetto. Additional works that were created in  Theresienstadt are also displayed. Recent images of the ghetto by  contemporary photographer Judith Glickman Lauder provide a stark  contrast between the dehumanizing conditions imposed by the Nazis  and the beauty of the pieces created by prisoners. 

Accumulations 

This section spotlights an aspect of museum collecting: the  accumulation of multiple examples of a given work. The first iteration, on  view through September 16, 2018, features a collection of 100  stereoscopic photographs of what was then called the Holy Land,  including such sites as the Western Wall and the Dead Sea. These early  examples of 3D technology were taken around 1900 when the popularity  of stereograms was at its peak. Visitors are able to re-create the  experience of viewing the stereograms through individual stereopticons  and see the originals displayed in cases. 

Signs and Symbols 

This section explores the significance of a particular iconic element or  motif in a variety of works. The first iteration, on view through January 6,  2019, examines the meaning of the Star of David within Jewish contexts  as well as the various interpretations of the six-pointed star as a  widespread motif in other cultures. Works on view range from a  Bohemian Hanukkah lamp (probably 18th century) that uses the star as an  emblem for this Czech Jewish community to Persian and Indian Judaica  that feature the symbol as an expression of late 19th and early 20th century Zionist sentiment. A ceramic beer pitcher from the late 19th century decorated with the star is also on display, attesting to secular  use of the hexagram as a symbol for beer in Europe. Examples of post Holocaust art are also featured, including Morris Louis’s Man Reaching  for a Star (1952), and in Dana Frankfort’s Star of David (Orange) (2007),  the artist intends the star to be a symbol that anyone can make the  subject of a work of art.  

Television and Beyond 

An important part of the Museum’s collection is explored in this section:  the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). With more than  4,000 holdings, the archive is the largest and most comprehensive body  of broadcast materials on Jewish culture in the United States. A selection of television clips, rotating every six months, inspired by the  archive examine how Jews have been portrayed and portray themselves,  and how mass media has addressed issues of religion, ethnicity, and  diversity. The first program, “Friends and Family,” view through August 6,  2018, highlights current television shows that disrupt previous norms of  the family sitcom, expanding the notion of family to include invented and  extended families and circles of intimate friends. Excerpts from such  shows as Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Difficult People, Fresh Off the  Boat, Grace and Frankie, Orange is the New Black, and Transparent are shown. 

Personas 

The Jewish Museum’s collection includes portraits dating from antiquity  to the present, most either by Jewish artists or of Jewish sitters. A  selection drawn from the Museum’s large and rich collection of portraits  from different times and places make up this section. Seen together, the  portraits offer remarkable insights into a range of social, political, and  historical circumstances. The first iteration, on view through March 24,  2019, features self-portraits by such artists as Nan Goldin, Louise  Nevelson, Man Ray, Ringl + Pit, and Cindy Sherman, among others. Moritz  Daniel Oppenheim’s early nineteenth-century canvas shows a man proud  of his academic training. Lee Krasner, a century later, depicts a young  woman whose firm gaze expresses her determined self-definition as a  painter. The feminist artists Hannah Wilke and Joan Semmel each rework  the tradition of the nude to propose a self-possessed female sexuality. In works by Ross Bleckner and Deborah Kass, the self is evoked through  symbolic forms associated with the artists’ identities as queer Jews. 

Scenes from the Collection is organized by the Jewish Museum curatorial  team. 

Exhibition design by Calvin Tsao | Tsao & McKown; design and installation  consultant, Daniel Kershaw; graphic design by Topos Graphics; lighting  design by Clinard Design Studio; and exhibition fabrication by South Side  Design & Building. 

Support 

Scenes from the Collection is made possible with leadership support  from Amy and Jeffrey Silverman and the Eugene and Emily Grant Family  Foundation, and through gifts from Audrey and Zygi Wilf, Jane and Mark  Wilf, Debra Fine and Martin Schneider, Tracey and Robert Pruzan, the  Lauder Foundation – Leonard & Judy Lauder Fund, Monica and Andrew  Weinberg, gifts in honor of Regina Gruss, Jonathan and Darcie Crystal,  Neubauer Family Foundation, Dr. William Pordy, Rhoda, Nolan and  Harriet Rothkopf, the Knapp Family Foundation, the David Berg  Foundation, Betty and John Levin, the Malinsky Family Charitable Trust  and the Ira Waldbaum Family Foundation, Sara and Axel Schupf, the 

Stern Family Philanthropic Foundation, UOVO, the Gottesman Fund, and other generous donors.