Ben Shahn, On Nonconformity examines the prolific and progressive artist’s commitment to chronicling and confronting crucial issues of his era, spanning from the Great Depression to the Vietnam War, as well as his exploration of spirituality and Jewish texts. Featuring 175 artworks and objects from the 1930s to the 1960s, including paintings, mural studies, prints, photographs, commercial designs, and ephemera, the exhibition highlights the enduring relevance of Shahn’s art across media, while revealing new insights into the complexity of his aesthetic and his decisive shift from documentary to allegorical and poetic styles in pursuit of a visual language that would resonate widely.

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Art Spiegelman’s Co-Mix: A Retrospective celebrated the career of one of the most influential living comic artists. Best known for Maus, his Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel about his parents’ survival of the Holocaust, Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) has produced a diverse body of work over the course of five decades that has blurred the boundaries between “high” and “low” art. This first U.S. retrospective spanned Spiegelman’s career: from his early days in underground “comix” to the thirteen-year genesis of Maus, to more recent work including his provocative covers for The New Yorker, and artistic collaborations in new and unexpected media.

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The Book of Esther in the Age of Rembrandt explores works representing the Book of Esther made by Rembrandt van Rijn with Jewish ceremonial art related to the holiday of Purim from seventeenth-century Amsterdam. In the age of Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 – 1669), the biblical Book of Esther was a key source of inspiration for diverse communities in Holland, both Jewish and Christian. Traditionally, the Esther story is read annually on the Jewish holiday of Purim. This exhibition gives expression to this full range of the Book of Esther’s popularity and meaning in Rembrandt’s time. 

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Trenton Doyle Hancock (b. 1974), a leading Black contemporary artist and cartoonist known for his collaged canvases, draws on the language of comics to challenge and comment upon the American condition. A defining figure of twentieth-century avant-garde art, the Jewish painter Philip Guston (1913-1980) addresses racism and antisemitism through his iconic paintings of buffoonish Klansmen. Draw Them In, Paint Them Out: Trenton Doyle Hancock Confronts Philip Guston brings together for the first time these two trailblazing American artists from different generations. Through disquieting imagery threaded with dark humor, the exhibition explores the artists’ shared commitment to investigating the legacy of white supremacy in the United States.

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Experience two exhibitions on the Museum's second floor: the first solo U.S. museum exhibition dedicated to the work of Ilit Azoulay (Israeli, b. 1972) and three galleries of highlights from the Jewish Museum Collection. Initially trained in photography, Azoulay has developed an interdisciplinary, research-based practice that explores how images and objects shape memory, produce knowledge, and support or undermine historical narratives. She employs photomontage, manipulating scale, perspective, and context—and also incorporates sound and sculptural elements—to recast objects in new roles. The exhibition includes work from 2011 to the present. Along with a visit to the Azoulay exhibition, spend some time with select works from the Museum's collection, including some magnificent recent acquisitions on view for the first time.

From December 5, 2024 until January 5, 2025, this tour will also include a viewing of the Tel Dan Stele, one of the most remarkable archaeological findings of recent times. Written by an Aramaic king who boasted of defeating the kings of Israel and Judah in the ninth century BCE, the text on this fragmentary basalt stone slab references the “House of David,” an allusion to the biblical king, making it the earliest known mention of the royal House of David outside of the Hebrew Bible.

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New works in painting, sculpture, and installation by Sula Bermúdez-Silverman (b. 1993), Sasha Gordon (b. 1998), Sara Issakharian (b. 1983), Chella Man (b. 1998), Ilana Savdie (b. 1986), Austin Martin White (b. 1984), and Rosha Yaghmai (b. 1978) use supernatural color and uncanny luminescence to evade the reductive nature of traditional figuration. Their palettes embody the lived experiences and cross-cultural allegiances of a multiethnic, multiracial, and otherwise multifaceted group of makers. Together, they push at and spill over the outermost limits of realism, highlighting the figure’s manipulability and continual metamorphosis. In turn, their practices generate space for resilient, transgressive, and exuberant bodies that cannot be placed or contained.

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From profound to playful,  works by women artists in the Jewish Museum's collection reveal the complexity of the Jewish experience. These 20th- and 21st- century artists tackle the challenges faced by Jewish immigrants, address questions of identity, connect to Jewish heritage, explore their world with a camera, and push against traditional norms with their feminist successes.

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The Jewish Museum presents Tissot and the Hebrew Bible, an installation of original designs by the French painter James Tissot (1836-1902) from a group of more than 350 paintings related to his goal of illustrating the Hebrew Bible. Spanning all of the books, from Genesis to the Prophets, Tissot’s watercolor illustrations are some of the most beloved and sought-after images in the Jewish Museum’s collection. The biblical stories are illustrated in cinematic vignettes that have influenced popular culture for decades.

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Marta Minujín: Arte! Arte! Arte! includes nearly 100 works organized to reflect Minujín’s bold experimentation over six decades. The exhibition charts Minujín’s influential career in Buenos Aires as well as time spent in Paris, New York, and Washington, DC, through a range of pioneering, mattress-based soft sculptures; fluorescent large-scale paintings; psychedelic drawings and performances; and vintage film footage. The artist’s ephemeral works—happenings, participatory installations, and monumental public art—are presented through rarely seen photographs, video, and other documentation.

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Mood of the moment: Gaby Aghion and the house of Chloé casts a new light on the label’s 70-year history with nearly 150 garments as well as never-before-exhibited sketches and documents from the Chloé Archive. Highlighting Aghion’s vision of effortless, luxurious fashion, and the work of iconic designers who began their careers with the brand, including Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, and Phoebe Philo, the exhibition showcases Aghion as a leader whose work altered the course of the global fashion industry in liberating women's bodies from the restrictive attitudes and styles of the time, as well as pioneering the emergence of luxury ready-to-wear. Tours will explore the ways in which each subsequent creative director after Aghion uniquely interpreted the Chloé ethos and echoed the needs of their time, from the development of ready-to-wear to embracing sustainable practices in fashion. This historical overview includes designs by Karl Lagerfeld (first hired by Aghion in 1964), Martine Sitbon, Stella McCartney, Phoebe Philo, Hannah MacGibbon, Clare Waight Keller, Natacha Ramsay-Levi, and Gabriela Hearst, Chloé’s current creative director.

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The Sassoons reveals the fascinating story of a remarkable Jewish family, following four generations from Iraq to India, China, and England through a rich selection of works collected by family members over time. The exhibition highlights the Sassoon family’s pioneering role in trade, art collecting, architectural patronage, and civic engagement from the early 19th century through World War II and features paintings, decorative arts, illuminated manuscripts, and Judaica.  Highlights include lavishly decorated Hebrew manuscripts, Chinese art and ivory carvings, rare Jewish ceremonial art, masterful paintings by Gainsborough and Corot, and magnificent portraits by John Singer Sargent of various Sassoon family members. The Sassoons explores themes such as discrimination, diaspora, colonialism, global trade, and war that not only shaped the history of the family but continue to define our world today. 

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The Jewish Museum’s influential role in the early 1960s New York art scene is the jumping-off point for an exhibition that explores a pivotal three-year period in the history of art and culture in New York City. New York: 1962–1964 examines how artists living in the city responded to their rapidly changing world through more than 150 works of art. The exhibition includes works of art by Diane Arbus, Merce Cunningham, Jim Dine, Melvin Edwards, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Yayoi Kusama, Norman Lewis, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Louise Nevelson, Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Faith Ringgold, James Rosenquist, Carolee Schneemann, Marjorie Strider, Mark di Suvero, Bob Thompson, and Andy Warhol, among many others and aligns with the years of Alan Solomon’s tenure as the Jewish Museum’s influential director. Solomon organized exhibitions dedicated to what he called the “New Art,” transforming the Jewish Museum into one of the most important cultural hubs in New York.

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The artist Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944) is an icon of Jazz Age New York. Born to a Jewish family in Rochester, she studied at the Art Students League in New York City and then in Europe, where she encountered two profound influences: the Symbolist painters and poets and, on the eve of the Great War, the Ballets Russes. The exhibition featured over 50 paintings and drawings, a selection of costume and theater designs, photographs and ephemera, as well as critically acclaimed poems, to offer a timely reconsideration of this important American artist, revealing Stettheimer's singular and often satiric vision and significant role in American modern art. This virtual tour highlights the artist's distinctly personal style of painting, Stettheimer's position amidst New York's artistic elite and avant-gardes, and her continued influence on artistic practice today.

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Chagall: Love, War, and Exile explores a significant but lesser-known period in the artist’s career from the rise of fascism in the 1930s through 1948, years spent in Paris and then in exile to New York. Marc Chagall (1887–1985), one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century, created his unique style by drawing on elements from richly colored folk art motifs, the Russian Christian icon tradition, Cubism, and Surrealism. Beginning with the evocative paintings from his years in France, the exhibition illuminates an artist deeply responsive to the suffering inflicted by war—often expressed with Christian imagery—and to his own personal losses and intimate sorrows. By the late 1940s, Chagall returns to colorful, joy-filled work celebrating love.

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The Hare with Amber Eyes evokes the story of the Ephrussi family—celebrated in the 2010 memoir and The New York Times bestseller of the same name by Edmund de Waal—and showcases the breadth and depth of their illustrious collection. The exhibition explores the family’s rise to prominence in the first half of the nineteenth century, followed by a focus on the prolific collector and historian of art, Charles Ephrussi, to the inter-war years, and finally, World War II, when the family lost its fortune and collection to Nazi looting. Diller Scofidio + Renfro, working closely with de Waal and the Jewish Museum, has created an interpretive installation that brings together pieces from the Ephrussi’s collections including artworks by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Berthe Morisot, Claude Monet, Gustave Moreau, and Auguste Renoir. At the exhibition’s centerpiece is the extraordinary collection of Japanese netsuke, miniature carved sculptures of the Edo Period (17th-19th centuries), hidden by a maid from German officials in her mattress during World War II, and later returned to the family after the war. 

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During World War II, untold numbers of artworks and cultural property were stolen by Nazi forces and, after the war, an estimated one million artworks and 2.5 million books were recovered. This exhibition chronicles the stories of the objects looted from Jewish families during the war including works by such renowned artists such as Marc Chagall, Paul Cézanne, Franz Marc, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Camille Pissarro.

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Becoming Jewish: Warhol’s Liz and Marilyn explores Andy Warhol’s fascination with Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor and the tabloid world they embodied. The fact that Hollywood’s blonde bombshell and violet-eyed siren were both converted Jews was significant: It signaled a growing popular acceptance of Jewish public figures. Warhol’s portraits, of these two subjects, explore the complex, manufactured nature of identity. 

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This exhibition of Amedeo Modigliani's early drawings—including examples of his striking paintings and majestic sculpture—illuminates the artist's relationship to his own Sephardic Jewish heritage and to the works of art that inspired him.

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Learn about the remarkable career of Edith Halpert, the trailblazing art dealer who championed the work of American artists, Stuart Davis, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O'Keeffe, Ben Shahn, and Marsden Hartley.

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Explore the bold and innovative work of Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, and others, produced during a little-known but influential chapter in the history of modernity and the Russian avant-garde.

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Explore the Jewish Museum’s rotating collection exhibition which features nearly 600 works from antiquities to contemporary art and addresses themes such as cultural identity, memory, immigration, and language.

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