Yeshiva University Museum (NYC)

From YUM’s curator (follow his Tumblr at zcurator):

A RADIO THAT SHOWS BUTTS? WHAT IS THIS MAGIC?!

No, it’s one of Wallace Berman’s Varifax collages (named after Kodak’s Verifax copy machine which Berman used to make his work). Peering deep into the future (into our present) Berm depicts four, then ubiquitous, portable AM/FM radios. However, instead of a speaker projecting sounds, Berman presents the radios projecting an image — football, cigarets a naked butt. Nevertheless, all of these could have likewise projected their respective familiar sounds live, on radio!

Thought of as one of the father’s of contemporary collage — reminds me of a great Hannah Hoch exhibition I saw at LACMA in ‘95! — Berman drew on images and practices employed by Beat artists and poets and earlier surrealists. Berman was interested in Jewish mysticism and created several works that present Hebrew letter combinations that he found in Kabbalistic texts.

Wallace Berman, Verifax collage and synthetic polymer with prestype on paperboard, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Charles Cowles, 1988, Accession Number: 88.31

10 hours ago 14 notes

JEWS AND THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG - JUNE 3 @6 PM

1 day ago 9 notes View high resolution

DANCE! SING! STUDY? - SHAVUOT IS ALMOST HERE!

So what are you going to do to celebrate the anniversary of when the Jews received the Torah at Mount Sinai? Study Torah until dawn? Eat bagels, blintzes, and cheesecake? Maybe dance with a tambourine? All of those are just fine for Shavuot, the holiday that marks the day (THE DAY!?!?!) when the Jews received the Torah — the 5 Books of Moses.

As for this image, it’s perhaps a bit earlier in the story. Miriam’s Song occurs just after the Jews escaping Egypt crossed the divinely-split Red Sea. Miriam, seen here holding a tambourine, is leading the women of the group in singing and dancing to celebrate their the Hebrews’ first moments of freedom.

You may ask, when did they receive the Torah? A few pages later.

Miriam’s Song by Samuel Hirszenberg
Poland?/Jerusalem? YU Museum (1975.021)

1 week ago 13 notes View high resolution

SCHOOL’S ALMOST OUT - BETTER STUDY BUDDY

Although this depicts a North African man identified as a Rabbi, it is stamped “Souvenir of the Holy Land” and wishes the recipient “A happy Christmas”. Another version of this postcard, which doesn’t bear the Christmas inscription, was mailed from Syria to Paris in 1925.

Postcard depicting a North African Rabbi
Cairo, ca. 1925
Lehnert & Landrock
Israel

1 week ago 10 notes View high resolution

BIG MOMMA CHARITY - JUST IN TIME FOR MOTHER’S DAY!

Israeli history was shaped largely by charitable giving that sustained (and still sustains) communal institutions that seek to raise up impoverished communities. And this kind of giving was itself a means for creating a cohesive society. Before and in the first decades following Israel’s inception, the Jews moving to their ancient homeland from around the world often arrived with little by way of modern education, let alone the skills that they would need to survive in Israel’s economy.

One organization, AMIT (Americans for Israel and Torah) which took on that name only in 1980, came into being in the 1920s to provide special vocational and religious training to orphaned and immigrant children through schools, workshops, and children’s villages. It was the mother for children without mothers.

In Hebrew the acronym AMIT includes the word mother, and can be interpreted as the beginning of the word for “my mother” or “our mother.” These pendents were gifts to AMIT donors, which they were encouraged to wear to show that they supported this organization.

* “Mother in Israel” pendants, 1984 and 1985, YU MUSEUM colleciton

1 week ago 9 notes

THE LANDSCAPE OF THE PHONEBOOK

From YUM’s curator. Follow him at zcurator.tumblr.com

Menashe Kadishman, Phonebook Cardiogram, Etching, 1972

What might a page from a phone book tell us about the constitution of our societies? If you could translate the lists of people and business into an image, such as a map, what would it look like?

Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman (b. 1932) seeks an answer to these questions in his Phone Books, some of which were presented in 2011 at The Negev Museum of Art in southern Israel. The exhibition’s curator, Dalia Manor, describes Kadishman’s project:

“Among the pages of the Phone Books in the different cities he visited, Kadishman‘discovered’ forms of landscape concealed between the lines of names and numbers. A grid of latitude and longitude coordinates, order and logic that are essential foundations for the information in the phone-book, also track random permutations of people and create curving lines in the margins of each column. For Kadishman, those lines resembled landscape contours, or the lines of a graph recording heartbeats in Phonebook Cardiogram.”

Learn more about the exhibition and Kadishman on the website for The Negev Museum of Art.

Thanks !

2 weeks ago 10 notes

RSVP TODAY! - ARTISTS AND CURATOR TOUR MAY 8, 6 PM @YUMUSEUM

Art with Strings and Lasers! There’s still time to see this! Join me tomorrow night!

Get a behind-the-scenes look of the exhibition It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond with curator Zachary Paul Levine and artists R. Justin Stewart and Elliott Malkin.
Please join us for a discussion-based tour on the role and value of art installation in the eruv-themed exhibition, followed by a private wine reception with the curator and artists.
6:00pm – Tour and Discussion
7:00pm – Young Friends of YU Museum Wine Reception
Free; Reservations required.
Please contact Barb Adelman at badelman@yum.cjh.org or 212-294-8339

*Images: Extrusion, by R. Justin Stewart (left), Laser Eruv, by Elliott Malkin (right)

From zcurator:

RSVP TODAY! - ARTISTS AND CURATOR TOUR MAY 8, 6 PM @YUMUSEUM

Art with Strings and Lasers! There’s still time to see this! Join me tomorrow night!

Get a behind-the-scenes look of the exhibition It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond with ME! curator Zachary Paul Levine and artists R. Justin Stewart and Elliott Malkin.

Please join us for a discussion-based tour on the role and value of art installation in the eruv-themed exhibition, followed by a private wine reception with the curator and artists.
6:00pm – Tour and Discussion
7:00pm – Young Friends of YU Museum Wine Reception

Free; Reservations required.
Please contact Barb Adelman at badelman@yum.cjh.org or 212-294-8339

*Images: Extrusion, by R. Justin Stewart (left), Laser Eruv, by Elliott Malkin (right)

2 weeks ago 3 notes View high resolution

“SHE’S GONE AND THE HARP IS BROKEN”

A body in state. A harp ripped apart. A rose wilts on the floor and a shirtless guy contemplates it all.

These are part of the image created by the art nouveau illustrator Moses Ehpraim Lilien for the book Judah by Barren Börries Freiherr von Munchausen. Around 1900 Munchausen published a collection of poetry called Judah in which he covered topics such as ancient and contemporary Jewish practice and myth, Greek stories, and Germanic mythology. Lilian completed several images for this volume, which, itself, became the standard gift for Bar Mitzvahs and Jewish confirmations in turn-of-the-century Germany.

Lilian was and remains known his illustrations in the art nouveau style, particularly the images he created for early-Zionist projects. Munchausen was an intriguing character known in large part for his attempts to create a German military academy in the Prussian model in Nazi Germany.

“The Dirge” illustration by E. M. Lilien for Juda by Börries Albrecht Conon August Heinrich Freiherr von Münchhausen published in 1900

2 weeks ago 22 notes View high resolution

Walking tour and conversation, Friday May 31, 2013, 10am – noon

Eruv and Monastery in Dialogue: Exploring Spatial Definitions of Religious Community

Join this exploration of how Jewish and Christian structures shape communities through shared purposes and essential distinctions. Rabbi Adam Mintz, curatorial advisor for the exhibition It’s a Thin Line, and Brother John Glasenapp, OSB, will illuminate historical and experiential aspects of eruv and cloister, and answer questions.

10am: Meet outside the Fort Washington Ave. (upper) entrance to the 190^th St. A-train station. We will proceed from the eruv to the monastic architecture in The Cloisters Museum.

Free; Space is limited.

Register: jmusto1@fordham.edu

Co-Presented by Yeshiva University Museum in conjunction with its current exhibition It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York and Beyond, and The Cloisters Museum.

3 weeks ago 9 notes View high resolution

THE SUN IS SHINING AND THE BIRDS ARE CHIRPING. TIME TO BUST OUT THE SPRING CLOTHES.

Perhaps you might try this fantastic Yemenite-embroidered top on for size? The donor purchased this blouse during her honeymoon in a shop called Esther’s in Jerusalem. Many immigrant women earned money by embroidering articles of clothing using traditional decorative motifs to be purchased by tourists.

Blouse decorated with Yemenite embroidery
Israel, 1953
Collection of Yeshiva University Museum
Gift of Charlotte Schneierson

3 weeks ago 13 notes

Yeshiva University Museum (NYC)

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