zcurator

[zcurator]

My most recent exhibition: Wright on the Walls. It's a room-sized coloring book of buildings and Ddesigns by Frank Lloyd Wright. At the National Building Museum.

[zcurator]

Visual Moment // Odessa - A Review of Babel, Ladyzhensky and the Soul of a City from Moment Magazine 

A wonderful review of my current exhibition on view in New York at @yumuseum. Have a look at these great images, and check out the originals -- which are stunning! -- in person while you can! 

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“To this day I remember, feel, and love this town…I love this town because I grew up in it, was happy, melancholy, and dreamy in it. Passionately and singularly dreamy.” —Isaac Babel, “At Grandmother’s” (1915)

The town that Russian author Isaac Babel references in this passage is the storied Black Sea metropolis of Odessa. Founded in 1794 by Russian Empress Catherine the Great, the seaport was envisioned as a new kind of imperial city—an orderly and modern economic crossroads. The city’s position on the periphery of the Russian Empire, however, lent it a frontier-like atmosphere. A wildly diverse, multilingual population of merchants, adventurers and fortune hunters was thus attracted to the city’s openness and engaging mix of high and low culture.

Read on at http://www.momentmag.com/visual-moment-odessa/ 

[zcurator]

Jewish Pirates!?!?

Super-fascinating read featuring the visual culture of Jamaican Jews.

[zcurator]

Exciting New Job!

I am delighted to share that I have accepted a position at the National Building Museum as the Director of Collections and Exhibitions. I’ll be facilitating all aspects of exhibition development and installation, overseeing collection use and maintenance, and managing collaboration with other museum divisions. I’m overjoyed to be part of this wonderful team, and I look forward to helping audiences explore the artistry of the built environment and its impact on their lives and communities. I’ll start in September.  

I enter into this new role as a result of the work I’ve accomplished within the Jewish museum community. This new position marks only a partial move away from institutions focused on Jewish art and history. I am excited to continue my service as a board member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, and I will remain involved in a several exhibition and book projects already underway.

I owe this opportunity to my terrifically supportive community of colleagues and collaborators. I am indebted to the many people who have offered counsel and encouragement over the past year, during which time I considered my long-term plans while working as an independent curator and consultant. During this period, I was fortunate to participate in several fascinating projects, notably as curator for exhibitions at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, Yeshiva University Museum, and the Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center in Tucson, among many others. These projects and the relationships I developed over their development have and continue to serve as sources of intellectual nourishment and professional growth.

[zcurator]

Scrap #mascots from the #1950s. Jack Scrap is the #brit and #Scrappy is the #American. Found at the @hagley_museum_and_library in research for the #exhibition at the @jewishmuseummd. #fun #history

[zcurator]

An Odessa Jewish Wedding

Another comic art adaptation: "And this is what Odessa beggars sometimes get at Jewish weddings." Painting by Yefim Ladyzhensky; text by Isaac Babel. More on view at @yumuseum, 15 W 16th St, NYC

[zcurator]

Case of a Bad Roommate -- in 1920s Odessa 

Something’s a little fishy in this comic adaptation of Yefim Ladyzhensky’s vignette of his childhood home. Seems like, ever since the Erlichs moved in, Yefim Ladyzhensky’s house has reeked of garlic and fried onions. Personally, I love the smell. 

Learn more and see this groundbreaking exhibition: http://www.yumuseum.org/exhibitions/view/odessa-babel-ladyzhensky-and-the-soul-of-a-city  

[zcurator]

Art Comic of the Day --  From Odessa Exhibition

"The sun hung from the #sky like the pink tongue if a thirsty dog... The day sat in an ornate boat, the day sailed toward evening, and halfway toward evening..." Isaac Babel; painting by Yefim Ladyzhensky. 

On view at @yumuseum , 15 W16th. Learn more at yumuseum.org! 

[zcurator]

Soooo wanted to #hug this #costume at the #brooklyn #museum. We both enjoyed the terrific exhibition about #masks. #art @brooklynmuseum #ohdeer #spikes #brassy #sculpture #hooray

[zcurator]

Horrible Town or Wonderful Town?

Another comicificaiton of one of the pieces in the Odessa exhibition @yumuseum using art and literature to explore a city. Visit today at 15 W16th in NYC. 

These are fun to make!

[zcurator]

Turning a Fine Art Painting to a Comic Book

Just took a shot transforming one of the paintings in the @yumuseum exhibition Odessa / Оде́сса: Babel, Ladyzhensky and the Soul of a City. The project pairs the work of two artists -- the writer Isaac Babel and painter Yefim Ladyzhensky, to get at the visible and less-visible elements of daily life in the mythic Black Sea port of Odessa. 

I’m pretty satisfied with this version and I think I’ll try a few more. Maybe this material needs a comic book? 

[zcurator]

So, here's a SR71 Blackbird at the Virginia #science #museum in the #speed #exhibition. #Fun to race a rat, feel #hurricane winds, and play with a strobe light. #rva

[zcurator]

So, I'm seeing Ralph #Nadar speak on museums at #aam2016 on incursion of #commercial and other pernicious forces in #american #museums. 😁 #omg

[zcurator]

Ruminations on New Narratives in Jewish Museums: Notes from the American Alliance of Museums 2016 meeting

Earlier today I was fortunate to participate on a panel discussing new narratives in identity museums. Speaker represented museums focusing on the the Civil War, Industrial History in Baltimore, and artistic expression in the gay community. I was invited to discuss the perspective of American Jewish museums. The following are notes from my presentation, adapted slightly for your reading pleasure.

For several years, the Council of American Jewish Museums has asked our community to consider fundamental questions about how we can remain relevant in the 21st century, in particular who we serve and how we will find support in the future. These questions are the result of generational shifts among our core constituencies, a fragmentation of what it means to be Jewish in America, and changing priorities among our most reliable philanthropic sources. To us, at the heart of these issues is the story our institutions tell – one that has, by and large and heretofore sought to be authoritative, comprehensive, and reflective of a particular way of thinking about American Jewish identity. However, such discourses find little resonance with contemporary audiences. We find ourselves looking at a period of prolonged ambiguity in determining which stories we will tell and how we will tell them. What new narratives of American Jewish identity and experience will have contemporary resonance?

But let’s get some context. The seeds of Jewish museums in the United States were sewn in the late 19th and early 20th century with the creation of a handful of collections that sought to chronicle Jewish civilization. But it was after the Second World War that most American Jewish museums were created, significantly in reaction to the destruction of European Jewry during the Holocaust, but also as a response to antisemitism in the American-Jewish experience. Jewish museums strived to be what Edward Rothstein recently described as “a tribute to Jewish continuity,” most critically, for the Jewish community – which largely footed the bill. These institutions told a story of “us,” of “our” sufferings and “our” triumphs. Through religious objects, art, and historical ephemera, they told about Jewish resilience over centuries of persecution. The story in America was one of integration, prosperity and achievement in a land of opportunity and religious liberty. These narratives expressed pride and success with the founding of the state of Israel three years after the Holocaust. The underlying message was of ethnic and political unity, rooted in historical experience and an ethical code rooted in religion.

And that story worked for nearly two generations. The first Jewish museums including the Jewish Museum in New York and the Skirball museum in Cincinnati – now Los Angeles –  were joined by dozens more by the first years of the 21st century. Every city seemed to have a museum that told this story, usually with a local twist. But then the boom ended.

A new generation of American Jews have since found a voice (or voices). For them, this narrative is antiquated. A 2013 study of trends in American Jewish life by the Pew Research Center confirmed what Jewish museums and other cultural organizations had suspected for over a decade. Younger generations of Jews had a sense of identity largely divorced from religion and history, but, rather, rooted in a conception of Jewish ethics and values. Jewish communal institutions – including museums – failed to resonate with that identity. Be it the receding presence of the Holocaust in American Jewish consciousness, the complicated issue of Israel as a component of Jewish identity, or the growing acceptance of multiple, or hyphenated identities in American life, Jewish museums needed a new story to tell. Making things trickier was sudden shifts in the philanthropic landscape. Jewish museums in the early 2000s suddenly found themselves with shrunken budgets as priorities changed among Jewish donors generally, and especially after the double hit of the 2008 financial crisis and the Madhoff Ponzi scheme.

From the vantage point of Jewish museums, the challenge is how to remake ourselves for this new generation who we mean to reflect. How do we cope with the lack of familiarity with even the most rudimentary components of Jewish history, and multiple, overlapping and conflicting identities among this supposed core constituency? This audience thirsts for touchstones that connect with their own sense of Jewishness, and find the authoritative tone of many exhibitions and programs to be just another form of Hebrew or Sunday school.

Since well before 2008, the Jewish museum and cultural field has seen contraction and consolidation. Collections have been consolidated to varying degrees of success, as in the case of the Center for Jewish History. Others – and the number is growing – have been transferred to historical societies and universities, such as the Magnes in Berkley. More recently, several holocaust education centers and memorials have merged, or are in the process of merging with museums, largely for lack of audience and support.  

Over the past decade, Jewish museums have sought to evolve to meet this maddeningly complex climate. Some use Jewish history as a jumping off point to access more universal concepts in American culture and history, but with little reference to an overarching, or sometimes any narrative. These approaches seek to bring Jewish history and culture to a broad audience who, hopefully, will care. Perhaps, most notable are efforts at two of the oldest Jewish museums. The Jewish Museum in New York is in the process of remaking itself into an art museum – or back into an art museum – with its collection of Jewish art and Judaica at its core. This means revising its decades-old historical, mono-narrative core exhibition into a series of encounters with Jewish art – divorced from a particular story. The museum has experimented with this approach in a series of warmly-reviewed temporary projects. Perhaps the best example of a successful attempt at this kind of narrative (or non-narrative) is the sprawling Noah’s Ark exhibition at the Skirball museum in Los Angeles where visitors immerse themselves in their “favorite childhood tale” through manipulatives, gallery happenings and programs. The project has been lauded by critics and visitors alike. Yet, the story’s biblical and Jewish origins, and its historical centrality to Jewish identity, are nearly completely absent from the presentation.

I should also mention the growing number of Jewish historical buildings that have become sites for a mix of Jewish programs and exhibitions, as well as other events that have nothing to do with the history of the space. The 6th and I historic synagogue in DC is the best-known example, but you’ll find others in Los Angeles, Tucson, and elsewhere. Many museums look to these institutions especially as models. But, then again, what’s the story?

Indeed, these shifts have been met with criticism from Jewish intellectuals and museum critics. Perhaps the loudest, but not the only voice, is Rothstein’s. He and others have criticized the universalization of Jewish experience for lacking historical rigor, of creating “loose analogies that don’t withstand scrutiny,” and obscuring the religious dimensions of Jewish identity and culture. His and others’ opprobrium in the pages of Mosaic Magazine earlier this year on the state of Jewish museums, perceive the impulse to derive universal meaning from the unique Jewish story as part of a wider trend among identity museums. Are we simply pandering to a new audience when we should be educating them? Rothstein and other critics nonetheless, call out exceptions, temporary and core exhibition projects that reflect institutions that have doubled down on Jewish history and culture – focusing on and elevating the particular over the universal. But, the bigger question, is anybody seeing and engaging with either approach in earnest?

For the moment, the answer is unclear. As I started by saying, American Jewish museums find themselves facing a prolonged period of ambiguity related to changes in our audiences who, in turn, demand a different story or stories. And, for the moment, we find ourselves at the beginning of this slog, looking for a solution that feels right – a new narrative, or, frankly, narratives that reflect the Jewish experience, as opposed to the voice of the Jewish community.

[zcurator]

Thanks @sekrumbein for this #photo and everybody else for joining the tour at @yumuseum 's #odessa #exhibition last night. Here's me #givinggoodtour.

[zcurator]

Had a #surprisingly #Funtime at @dupontunderground 's #exhibition #project, Raise/Raze, playing with lots of Velcro #balls. Nice job!

[zcurator]

JEWISH GANGSTERS OF ODESSA

Did you know #Odessa was #famous for its #Jewish #gangsters? Here's one gang in "A Holdup at Night," on view right now at Yeshiva University Msueum's exhbition Odessa / Оде́сса: Babel, Ladyzhensky and the Soul of a City. The exhibition presents the story of a city in the midst of wild #revolution through the perspective of two artists: writer Isaac Babel and painter Yefim Ladyzhensy. Curated by yours truly! Find out more: yumuseum.org