The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street
New York, NY 10128
Admission: Adults, $12, Seniors over 65, $10
Students, $7.50, Children under 12 and Jewish Museum Members: free
212-423-3200
jewishmuseum.org


The Jewish Museum, one of the world's largest and most important institutions devoted to exploring the remarkable scope and diversity of Jewish culture, was founded in 1904 in the library of The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where it was housed for more than four decades. In 1944, Frieda Schiff Warburg, widow of the prominent businessman and philanthropist, Felix Warburg, who had been a Seminary trustee, donated the family mansion at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street to the Seminary for use as the Museum.

Current exhibitions:

Reclaimed: Paintings from the Collection of Jacques Goudstikker
March 15, 2009 - August 02, 2009

This exhibition presents rare Old Master paintings drawn from the collection of Jacques Goudstikker, one of the preeminent art dealers in Amsterdam prior to World War II. In 1940, Goudstikker was forced to flee war-torn Europe with his family, yet died in a tragic accident while escaping the Nazi invasion. He left behind approximately 1,400 works of art in his gallery, which were looted by Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering. After years of unsuccessful attempts to recover these paintings, his family recently reclaimed 200 paintings from the Dutch government. Forty of the finest pieces—including Dutch Old Master works and Italian and Northern Renaissance paintings—have been selected for a touring exhibition that will showcase the eye of Jacques Goudstikker and emphasize the importance of both the artworks and their historic restitution. Photographs and documents, including Goudstikker’s gallery inventory notebook, will illuminate Goudstikker’s fascinating story.
Both the artist and her fictional character struggle to make sense of personal and collective trauma when information is scarce. Zack’s video was strongly influenced by a visit to her grandmother’s former house in Kosice, a city in present-day Slovakia. Unable to enter the house, Zack tried to imagine the interiors-both present and past. For the film’s mise-en-scène, Zack incorporates period clothing and furniture, but it remains an incomplete sketch of the past. Although the work is entitled Mother Economy, the artist intended her hero’s identity to remain ambiguous. The protagonist may be a dedicated non-Jewish housekeeper who remained in the house long after the family’s deportation and continued to perform rituals in their absence. If she is the Jewish mother, she survives because of calculated efforts to distance herself from traumatic memories.


The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River—by Péter Forgács and The Labyrinth Project
March 15, 2009 - August 02, 2009

The Danube Exodus: The Rippling Currents of the River is an immersive installation about the displacement of ethnic minorities and the possible connections between them. The exhibition interweaves three historical stories. One narrative tells of Eastern European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in 1939, trying to reach a ship on the Black Sea that will carry them to Palestine. The second story, set in 1940 following the Soviet re-annexation of Bessarabia, tells of émigré German farmers abandoning their adopted homeland to return to the "safety" of the Third Reich, but eventually being relocated in occupied Poland. Both groups were transported along the Danube River by Captain Nándor Andrásovits, an amateur filmmaker who documented these voyages; he and the river are the subjects of the third story.

The interactive installation is based on The Danube Exodus, an award-winning film by Hungarian filmmaker and scholar Nándor Andrásovits, and grew out of a collaboration with The Labyrinth Project, an art collective based at the University of Southern California that specializes in interactive narratives. The installation premiered at the Getty Center in 2002, and has since been seen at museums around the world.



They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust
May 10, 2009 - October 04, 2009

Mayer Kirshenblatt has made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color, "lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived." This unique project is a blend of memoir, oral history, and visual interpretation. Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, the project is a remarkable record -- in both words and images -- of Jewish life in a Polish town before World War II, as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy. Further information can be found at www.mayerjuly.com