Stories about how we look at Jewish artists and how Jewish artists look at the world.
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Culture The Nazis looted more than 500 of their paintings; a Jewish collector’s heirs still seek justice and restitution
On Sunday, Pauline Baer de Perignon stood in front of the Marquise de Parbére for the last time. The painting of the Marquise, the mistress of Philippe II the duc d’Orleans, by Nicholas Largilliere is on exhibition at Sotheby’s New York in advance of an auction this Thursday. It is in New York City thanks…
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Culture In Nazi-looted art case at Supreme Court, one (brief) moment of levity
Despite being mired in legalese, the oral argument at the Supreme Court for the case Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection Foundation regarding the Nazi-looted Camille Pissarro painting had one moment of levity. About an hour in, Justice Stephen Breyer asked, “Can everyone agree that this is a beautiful painting?” It was the first direct mention of…
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Art For decades, a Jewish family has sought the return of their beloved painting — can the Supreme Court make that happen?
Twenty-two years ago, photographer Claude Cassirer received a call he never expected. His family’s long-lost Nazi-looted painting by the French-Jewish painter Camille Pissarro had been found. It was hanging in a Spanish museum. The painting, “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie” depicts the grand avenues of modern Paris glistening during an afternoon rain. It…
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Culture In Baltimore, a Jewish museum captures the precarity — and beauty — of American Jewish life
The improbable hybrid of a tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, and a sajjada, a Muslim prayer rug. A family recipe for an Iraqi date pastry that evokes layers of Arab-Jewish identity. Glazed stoneware for trans Jews to use in ritual practice. A film of screen recordings and Zoom exchanges about disability and displacement. These works,…
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Culture From Basra to the Chelsea Hotel — My father’s journey
Editor’s Note: The artist George Chemeche died Jan. 11, 2022 at age 89. To mark this solemn occasion, we are republishing this remembrance of the artist’s life and work by his daughter, Amanda Chemeche. My father, George Chemeche, is 87 years old. I live with him here in the Chelsea Hotel. Since the onset of…
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Culture In an overlooked comic from the early 1970s, the most Jewish superhero story ever told
“Eternals,” a movie based on a Marvel comic about immortal agents of giant space gods, arrived on Disney+ Jan. 12. The “Absolute Fourth World by Jack Kirby Vol. 2” comes out Jan. 18. It’s an omnibus collection of DC Comics’ sprawling saga about warring alien gods. Though these comics are by rival companies, they’re actually…
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Culture Jewish photographer behind iconic Pulitzer-winning images hangs up his lens
If there’s a definitive Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, it’s “The Soiling of Old Glory” — Stanley Forman’s spot news winner for the Boston Herald American in 1976. In it, a youth turns an American flag into a weapon to use against a Black man at a school busing protest. Then again, make that two definitive photos:…
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Culture The Holocaust robbed them of their stories; this artist is bringing them back to life
In his new graphic nonfiction narrative book “When I Grow Up, the Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers,” author and New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein deftly gives life to the never-told stories of six Jewish teenagers in the lost world of Yiddishuania, formerly Poland/Lithuania. In the 1930s, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, then based…
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