Contemporary art and more
24/10/2003 - 04/01/2004
The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave.
at 92nd St., NYC
212.423.3200
www.thejewishmuseum.org
Image: Dara Birnbaum, Erwartung/Expectancy, 1995/2001, Room Installation with plexiglass panels, DVD projection, and sound, Courtesy of the Artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, Photograph by David Heald
Erwartung/Expectancy: A Video Installation by Dara Birnbaum
Through January 4, 2004
Dara Birnbaum’s multimedia installation, Erwartung/Expectancy, appropriates Arnold Schoenberg’s influential 1909 opera, Erwartung, to probe the contemporary condition of women. Still considered avant-garde for its investigation of emotional states, Schoenberg’s Erwartung was influenced by the study of psychoanalysis that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. By selecting and recreating specific tableaux from Schoenberg’s original work, Birnbaum confronts questions about female identity and independence as she delves into the realm of the unconscious. Schoenberg’s Erwartung dramatizes one woman’s condition as she moves through varying stages of isolation, alienation, and uncertainty in search of a lost lover.
Signs From Berlin: A Project By Stih and Schnock
Through January 4, 2004
In this multimedia installation, German artists Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock’s award-winning memorial, Places of Rememberance, is presented through large-scale video projections and documentary materials showing the work as it appears in Bayerisches Viertel, a Berlin neighborhood which, prior to World War II, was home to a thriving Jewish population. Installed in 1993, the project in Berlin consists of 80 signs that hang from neighborhood lampposts. One side of each sign displays a Nazi ordinance passed between 1933 and 1945 that placed restrictions on Jews. The other side shows a simple colored pictogram created by the artists to illustrate the edict. The signs reveal how German Jews were systematically stripped of basic rights and forced out of daily life.
Also on view at The Jewish Museum:
Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider
opens Friday, October 24
The first American museum exhibition to concentrate on the friendship and intellectual dialogue between the visionary painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) and the revolutionary composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) will be on view at The Jewish Museum from October 24, 2003 through February 12, 2004. Schoenberg, Kandinsky, and the Blue Rider illuminates a pivotal moment in the early 20th century when artists and musicians embraced radical ideas and created new modes of expression.
For more information about The Jewish Museum’s special exhibitions and related programs, please visit www.thejewishmuseum.org
