In honor of the Argentine bicentennial, and the country’s position as guest of honor at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair, the Jewish Museum Berlin has turned over several of its rooms to “Jewish Life in Argentina,” a special exhibition that functions as a living archive of the community’s 150-year-old history, as well as a quiet…
The Jewish museum (Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme) in Paris greets its visitors with massive tombstones dating back to 11th century. There are also frail parchments, medieval megillot, newspaper clips of the Dreyfus trial, and dim brass ritual objects. Imagine then, the shock and delight inspired by the exhibit that landed there this spring,…
As I walked into Nancy Hwang’s art-slathered loft on another tropical day in New York City, I reminded myself that the visit was strictly “no business.” Through a serendipitous, mysterious phone call, I had somehow landed myself a promise of homemade cake and coffee at an intimate birthday celebration among the close friends of an…
As the ringleader of the ragtag group of professional hedonists, acid-eating Buddhists, and scribbling loners known as the Beats, Allen Ginsberg played many roles. Though Ginsberg is best known as a progenitor of 1950s and ’60s counterculture, when he whipped bookstore readings into frenzies with “Howl” and negotiated with the Hell’s Angels to ensure the…
The hipster and Hasid communities go together like peanut butter and, well, gefilte fish. From the glaring cultural clashes, to the battle of the bicycles, the chosen people and their artsy, gaunt neighbors have not exactly achieved a harmonious blend over the years. But on May 27 on the Lower East Side, the two worlds…
Some Jewish photographers embrace subject matter which plays better overseas than in the United States. One example is Weegee, born Usher Fellig in Złoczów, whose photos of low class nightlife and crime were infused with a raucous gusto that charmed Europe decades before he received adequate recognition in America. Leon Levinstein, an even more difficult…
Art lovers eager to rethink the inherent truth in the media of photography and video have until May 30 to catch “Adad Hannah: Masterpieces in Motion” at Connecticut’s Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Born in New York in 1971, Hannah was raised in Israel, London, and Vancouver. Based in Montreal for several years, Hannah has created…
The 19th century Dutch painter Meijer de Haan (1852-1895), whose life was cut short by tuberculosis, has been so overshadowed by his mentor Paul Gauguin that even New York’s MoMA, which owns Gauguin’s 1889 portrait of de Haan, misidentifies the sitter as “Jacob Meyer de Haan” (sic). More than merely getting de Haan’s name right,…
100% of profits support our journalism
