Testimony
Boris Lurie and Jewish Artists from New York
GRAND HOTEL PARR
Photobooks by Martin Parr
Nuremberg 90402
Germany
Testimony. Boris Lurie and Jewish Artists from New York
On view until February 1, 2026
Neues Museum Nuremberg (NMN), in collaboration with the Boris Lurie Art Foundation is presenting the work of Jewish artist Boris Lurie in dialogue with works by Zoë Buckman, Fancy Feast, and Marsha Pels. Testimony continues the theme of the 2024 exhibition Testimony. Boris Lurie and Contemporary Art from Eastern Europe, which recontextualized Lurie’s War Series in conversation with young artists from Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. While the previous exhibition focused on Lurie’s perspective on war, Testimony now centers on his distorted depiction of women, as seen in his series Dismembered Women and Pinups. These are set against the works of contemporary artists who, like Lurie, explore their own relationships to sexuality, bodily violence, trauma, and family history through a Jewish lens, while challenging and deconstructing the male-dominated discourse both artistically and conceptually.
Boris Lurie (1924–2008) was a self-taught artist and co-founder of the NO!art movement. His work encompasses assemblages, collages, paintings, and texts, confronting war, violence, consumer society, pornography, and the art market. Lurie survived several concentration camps and emigrated to New York in 1946. In 1959, he co-founded NO!art with Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher, advocating political engagement, social responsibility, and unflinching self-expression, while rejecting Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. The movement began at the March Gallery on East 10th Street and later exhibited at the uptown Gallery: Gertrude Stein, gaining attention with provocative shows such as Doom, Involvement, and Vulgar.
Jewish artists Zoë Buckman, Fancy Feast, and Marsha Pels, like Lurie, live in New York and explore shifts in attitudes toward Jewish identity, femininity, and self-representation through sculpture, textile, and video works. New York based curator Sara Softness places these works in relation to Lurie’s, introducing feminist perspectives to expand the previously male-dominated interpretive framework. In the exhibition, the artists’ works are presented in three thematic chapters alongside Lurie’s: Re-membered, Out of the ash / I rise, and I carry them within me. In this context, Lurie’s representations are seen in a new light.
Conceptual artist Zoë Buckman (b. 1985) addresses themes of the body, trauma, and female empowerment in her interdisciplinary practice. Fancy Feast (b. 1988) brings her unique perspective as a burlesque performer, author, and sex educator. Marsha Pels (b. 1950), a sculptor and installation artist, explores power, politics, femininity, and her personal family history. Central to her work is the Hitler Vitrines series, in which crystal-cast objects—such as a spine, gas mask, pistol, boots, and skull—are displayed. This series was developed during a Fulbright research stay in northern Germany, where Pels investigated her German-Jewish roots.
GRAND HOTEL PARR. Photobooks by Martin Parr
On view until February 22, 2026
Neues Museum Nuremberg (NMN), in collaboration with The PhotoBookMuseum, Cologne, is presenting the first major retrospective of British photographer and Magnum member Martin Parr’s photobooks. Since the 1980s, Parr (1952-2025) has captured the absurdities of global consumer and leisure culture like no one else, translating them into a distinctive visual language. With an unflinching eye and a touch of humour, the photobooks featured in GRAND HOTEL PARR reveal a bizarre world of pomp and kitsch, four-star luxury and all-inclusive resorts, crossing social boundaries and national identities. The exhibition space itself is transformed into a British seaside hotel, complete with red carpeted floors and veneer-panelled walls, creating an immersive setting that invites visitors to explore the hotel’s facilities and browse Parr’s photobooks in the “Reading Lounge”.
A passionate collector and networker, Parr has played a key role in raising the profile of the photobook worldwide, particularly since the early 2000s. Through his efforts, the photobook has become a central medium in contemporary art photography. GRAND HOTEL PARR represents the first monographic retrospective of a photographer told entirely through his published photobooks, offering a new perspective on Parr’s work: seen through the medium of the photobook.
In the Neues Museum’s main exhibition hall, which has been transformed to look like a slightly outdated and ageing hotel, visitors get to explore nearly 250 of Parr's book projects—the first time they have been presented together on this scale. After passing the reception desk, visitors enter the “Reading Lounge,” where they can browse through Parr’s most famous photobooks, among them The Last Resort (1986), focused on the seaside town of New Brighton near Liverpool; Small World (1995), exploring global tourism; and Common Sense (1999), a vivid take on consumer excess.
Connected to the central reading lounge, with its grand piano and floral arrangement, are thematic rooms that correspond with the subjects of Parr's photobooks: the “Billiard Room,” “Dining Room,” and a “Fashion Boutique.” A terrace complete with artificial turf and a “Seaside View” is also part of the setting. The open exhibition parcours encourages visitors to stroll and linger, browse and discover, be it at the “Bar” or the “Souvenir Shop.” From Benidorm to Dubai, Manchester to Hong Kong, the pictures in this exhibition get up close with the viewer.
Coming soon
Mariana Castillo Deball. Ella es la luna and she lights the dark (from February 6, 2026) / Ticha. Retrospective (from March 27, 2026) / Alexandra Grant. Ein Stern genügt, um an das Licht zu glauben (from July 17, 2026)
