Public programs
Spring 2015
The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave at 92nd St
New York, NY 10128
Hours: Saturday–Tuesday 11am–5:45pm,
Wednesday closed (Shops/Café open 11am–3pm),
Thursday 11am–8pm, Friday 11am–4pm
T +1 212 423 3200
F +1 212 423 3232
The Jewish Museum is pleased to announce its spring public programs schedule, featuring lectures and conversations, music and film, and more.
Click here for our complete programs calendar.
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Bang on a Can: Beauty Is Power
Featuring Maya Beiser
Thursday, January 29, 7:30pm
Inspired by Helena Rubinstein—the fascinating, self-made beauty-industry powerhouse—the celebrated cellist Maya Beiser asks: Is beauty powerful? For this concert, held in conjunction with the exhibition currently on view at the Jewish Museum, Beiser has chosen to perform beautiful music by powerful women. From Hildegard von Bingen to Janis Joplin to Imogen Heap, this program explores themes of beauty, spirituality, and ritual. The concert features the U.S. premiere of Anna Clyne’s Rest These Hands and the world premiere of Emunah by Julia Wolfe, co-founder of Bang on a Can.
Tickets
A Closer Look gallery talks
Weekly in-depth explorations of select works of art
Mondays, 1pm
Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power
February 2, 9, & 23; March 2, 9 & 16
Repetition & Difference
March 23; April 13 & 27
Laurie Simmons: How We See
March 30; April 20
This is How We Do It: Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power
Thursday, February 5, 6:30 pm
Curator Mason Klein leads a gallery walkthrough focusing on the inspiration behind Helena Rubinstein: Beauty is Power as it developed from idea to reality, expressed through the work featured in the exhibition.
Free with pay-what-you-wish admission; RSVP recommended
Dialogue and Discourse: Deborah Willis and Adrienne L. Childs
The Gertrude and David Fogelson Lecture
Thursday, February 12, 6:30pm
A conversation between two prominent women who have both written extensively on perceptions of beauty, image, and power in contemporary media. Deborah Willis, PhD. is Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. Willis was a 2005 Guggenheim Fellow and Fletcher Fellow, and a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. Adrienne L. Childs is an independent scholar, art historian and curator. She is an associate of the W.E.B DuBois Institute for the Study of African and African American Research at Harvard University.
Free with pay-what-you-wish admission; RSVP recommended
The Wind Up
Wednesday, February 18, 8–11pm
Join us for an evening of music and art, featuring a live set by garage-pop band Beverly, fronted by the brilliant female vocalist and guitarist Drew Citron, and an opening DJ set by Le Chev. Rubinstein’s iconic style will be celebrated through numerous art activities, including statement jewelry making, nail art, and a photo booth for capturing one-of-a-kind portraits. The evening will also feature an open beer and wine bar, and exhibition tours of Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power at 8:15 and 9:15pm.
Tickets
Keynote Lecture by Dr. Olaf Peters: From “Degenerate Art” to Looted Art, Reflections on a Historical Process in Nazi Germany
Thursday, February 19, 6:30pm
Organized by Columbia University’s Deutsches Haus and the Department of Art History and Archeology, “Ghosts of the Past: Nazi-Looted Art and its Legacies” convenes an international group of historians, curators, and scholars in provenance research and the history of German art dealership to explore an unexamined chapter of the legacies of the Third Reich that continues to haunt our present. This conference, to be held at Columbia on February 20 and 21, 2015, opens with a keynote lecture at the Jewish Museum by Olaf Peters, Professor at Martin-Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, and curator of the recent exhibition Degenerate Art at the Neue Galerie, New York.
In collaboration with Goethe-Institut, New York.
Free with pay-what-you-wish admission; RSVP recommended
Screening: Advanced Style
Tuesday, March 3, 6:30pm
This 2014 documentary examines the lives of seven unique New Yorkers whose eclectic personal style and vital spirit have guided their approach to aging. Directed by Lina Plioplyte and based on Ari Seth Cohen’s famed blog of the same name, Advanced Style paints intimate and colorful portraits of independent, stylish women, ages 62 to 95, who are challenging conventional ideas about beauty, aging, and American culture’s increasing obsession with youth.
Tickets
The Liberating Lens: Jewish Photographers Picture the Modern World
James L. Weinberg Distinguished Lecture
Thursday, March 5, 6:30pm
In the middle decades of the 20th century, Jews turned to photography in large numbers as a means of self-expression, a form of political activism, and a mode of artistic creativity. In this lecture, Professor Deborah Dash Moore looks at the liberating power of the camera. What did Jewish Americans see when they pictured the modern world? How did photography offer them freedom? By expanding on the works of photographers such as Nan Goldin, Garry Winogrand, and Bruce Davidson, this talk will consider the camera’s appeal for so many Jews of the mi-century. Deborah Dash Moore is Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor of History, and Director, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan.
Tickets
The James L. Weinberg Distinguished Lecture is made possible by the Marshall M. Weinberg Fund, with additional support from Marshall M. Weinberg.
Author talk: Lucette Lagnado
Monday, March 16, 11:30am
Celebrated writer Lucette Lagnado returns to the Museum to share her recent research on Jewish life in the Middle East. Lagnado is an investigative reporter for The Wall Street Journal and the author of memoirs The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit and The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth, from Cairo to Brooklyn.
Tickets
Wish You Were Here: Sarah Bernhardt
Thursday, March 19, 6:30pm
Portrayed by Carol Ockman, “Sarah Bernhardt” sits down with Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, as part of our unusual, participatory series of interviews with the subjects of Warhol’s famous portraits of influential Jewish figures. Ockman is Professor of Art, Williams College, and has worked on numerous exhibitions, including Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama held at the Museum in 2005.
Free with pay-what-you-wish admission; RSVP recommended
This program has been funded by a donation from Lorraine and Martin Beitler who gifted Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century to the Jewish Museum in 2006.
Writers and Artists Respond: Nicole Eisenman
Thursday, March 26, 6:30pm
Artist Nicole Eisenman speaks with Joanna Montoya Robotham, Neubauer Family Foundation Assistant Curator, about Seder (2010), the latest featured work in the Museum’s Masterpieces & Curiosities exhibition series.
Free with pay-what-you-wish admission; RSVP recommended
Susan L. Braunstein: The Lines of Distinction Lecture
Tuesday, March 31, 11:30am
Henry J. Leir Curator Susan Braunstein speaks about the Judaica objects included in Repetition and Difference, which gathers seemingly identical works from the Museum’s collection to examine how differences and derivations can reveal significant meanings about artistic production, social issues, and prevailing political conditions.
Tickets
The Lines of Distinction Lecture has been endowed by Barbara and Benjamin Zucker in memory of Lotty and Charles Zucker and by William W. Hallo, the late Susanne Hallo Kalem, and the late Ruth Hallo Landman, in memory of Dr. Gertrude Hallo.
Dialogue and Discourse: Laurie Simmons and Lynne Tillman
The Mildred and George Weissman Program
Monday, April 13, 6:30 pm
Artist Laurie Simmons, whose exhibition How We See is currently on view, sits down with writer and critic Lynne Tillman to discuss her work.
Free with pay-what-you-wish admission; RSVP recommended
The Mildred and George Weissman Program has been endowed by Paul, Ellen, and Dan Weissman in honor of their parents.
H.G. Adler: A Survivor’s Dual Reverie
Featured authors: Peter Filkins, Jeremy Adler, Daniel Mendhelson, Ruth Franklin
Moderator: Edwin Frank
Thursday, May 7, 7pm
Compared by critics to Kafka and Joyce, H. G. Adler is quickly gaining recognition as a key figure in 20th-century fiction. A panel of writers and journalists comes together to discuss Adler’s unique “dual” perspective on the events of the Holocaust. Alder is author of both The Wall—a fictional account of his own survival —and of Theresienstadt 1941–1945: The Face of a Coerced Community—an academic examination of the same event to be published in a new translation in October 2015.
Co-presented with the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature
Tickets
Bang on a Can: Revolution of the Eye
Featuring Bang on a Can All-Stars
Thursday, May 14, 7:30pm
This concert by the Bang on a Can All-Stars highlights the relationship between music and image. The All-Stars will perform an acclaimed work by jazz giant Don Byron to accompany a screening of Eugene, an early television show by pioneering comedian Ernie Kovacs. In 2000, Bang on a Can commissioned Don Byron to write a score for the iconic show, which was a completely silent broadcast on national TV in 1961. This concert also will include a music and video piece by visual artist Christian Marclay, whose 24-hour film The Clock was installed last year at the Museum of Modern Art.
Tickets
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, 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 and through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
