Innovation and the Arts: cultural change agents speak out by Anne Hromadka The Jewish cultural renaissance in North America has led to an explosion of Jewish art initiatives and cultural projects, independent spiritual groups, and alternative educational programs. Since 2008, due in part to the economic downturn, several major Jewish culture initiatives faced serious challenges, evidenced by the closure of JDub Records and the discontinuation of the printed editions of Heeb and Zeek magazines. These changes have shown how Jewish culture initiatives attract funders and the need for increased second-stage or mezzanine funding to help organizations mature past their start-up phases. On August 29th, 2011, a panel of key young Jewish culture professionals participated in a conference call about … Continue Reading
Israel Museum to Sell Selected Artwork
Sotheby’s has announced that it will offer a group of works from the collection of The Israel Museum across a series of sales throughout the upcoming autumn and winter auction seasons, in both New York and London. The group will be led by works in the New York sales of Impressionist and Modern Art this November, including canvases by Marc Chagall, René Magritte, Camille Pissarro, Chaïm Soutine and Georges Braque, among others. In July 2010, the Israel Museum completed a three-year renewal project that included the first comprehensive re-evaluation of its nearly 500,000 object collection since its founding, together with the complete re-installation of its collection galleries, which, in turn, catalyzed a carefully focused process of collection refinement. Proceeds from the works on offer … Continue Reading
PresenTense Summer Fellowship Launches Cultural/Educational Projects
This summer’s cohort at the PresenTense Global Summer Institute included three fellows whose ventures touch the Jewish cultural/educational field. Here’s a look at two projects recently launched: from Los Angeles, California, Anne Hromadka: Anne holds dual masters degrees in Jewish Communal Service (Hebrew Union College, LA) and Public Art Studies (USC). Anne is working on NuART [Insert Jewish Culture Here] that, once completed, will be a fully functional art gallery and educational space set-up inside an altered RV. This mobile art space will house cutting edge installations, sound-pieces, performances, paintings, sketches and videos. One year from now, Anne tells eJP, "NuART will be touring in the SoCal area - headed to a street near you, bringing Jewish art and education to all our … Continue Reading
Reimagining our Communal Structures
by Dr. Stephen Hazan Arnoff The demise of JDub has sparked an important conversation about very real threats to a sustainable culture of creativity and innovation in the Jewish world. We have heard concerns about broken business models for Jewish not-for profits, the narrow market for Jewish creativity and media, and a call for much broader and deeper support from the philanthropic sector. However, what's missing from the conversation is a story we are telling at the 14th Street Y - hopefully as a model for others seeking a long-term solution for engaging Jewish innovation. The story begins more than a century ago, as billions of dollars of capital came to be invested in the Jewish communal infrastructure. The results of this investment are the core businesses of Jewish life as we have … Continue Reading
Is There a Future for the New Jewish Culture?
by Jo Ellen Green Kaiser Last One Out, Turn Off the Lights Are we the last ones left? JDub, the Jewish music distributor and owner of the internet-based magazine Jewcy, is closing down. Heeb , the Jewish magazine that put a pig and hunky Jewsus on its cover, closed last year as a print magazine and now continues as a blog. Guilt & Pleasure, the Bronfman-funded vehicle for cosmopolitan Jews, died without telling anyone - appropriately enough, right after its 2009 Death issue. Of all the bright new Jewish media that launched at the turn of this century, the only outfits still plugging away are Habitus, the semi-annual diaspora journal funded largely by a single, anonymous donor; and Tablet, which started out as Nextbook, and is funded (for now) by Mem Bernstein and individuals … Continue Reading
World’s Leading Holocaust Music Website to be Launched in Berlin
The formal launch of the world's leading website on music in the Holocaust is to be a key event at this week's historic meeting of World ORT's Board of Representatives in Berlin. The meeting marks World ORT's first function in the city where it became established as an international organization since the war. The website, which features more than 100 recordings and more than 300 articles written by a team of 20 academics, researchers and Survivors, fills what was perhaps the largest single gap in understanding the Holocaust. The need for this website is evident when one considers that I have found so little information devoted to music during the Holocaust in the 27,000 pages - 29 volumes - of the 2001 edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians," said Mr Marks, a former … Continue Reading
Something is Changing in Budapest
[Those of us of a certain age remember the stories of Diaspora Jewish women visiting Russia and smuggling documents, letters, etc, out hidden in their boots. Today may be the age of Facebook and Twitter messages flying around the world instantaneously, but sometimes it takes time for certain documents to come to life. Here is one example.] Forgotten KGB agent REB's testimony from Budapest: TOP SECRET "We have been watching Hungarian Jewry for a long time. They were never a real threat, they were rather passive: even though this is one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. However it seems that Western influences have infiltrated the Hungarian Jewish community in the past 2 years. They've been organizing something called 'Limmud'. They go to an abandoned hotel on the outskirts … Continue Reading
What is the Difference Between Choosing and Being Chosen?
In the classic joke, a man asks a rabbi: “Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?” The rabbi answers: “Do we?” Bay Area artists Ken Goldberg and Gil Gershoni present a contemporary take on the inquisitive impulse with a new media installation at the San Francisco Contemporary Jewish Museum now through July 31, 2011. Are We There Yet? combines the latest in intelligent cameras and acoustics to create a reactive sound environment that encourages visitors to reconsider the history and future of curiosity. The ability of the installation to generate a unique auditory experience for each visitor is an exciting first, using new robotic algorithms and software that allow cameras to instantly adapt and spatialize audio to the movements of each visitor. Hundreds of questions … Continue Reading
The (Modern) Orthodox Forum Discusses Art and Culture
by Elke Reva Sudin for JewishArtNow.com A call for innovation in the arts was discussed this week at The Orthodox Forum, an academic conference hosted by Yeshiva University. The mission of this year’s conference was to come to terms and innovate art and cultural trends not inherently understood in the community. The discourse reflected the Modern Orthodox insecurities balancing integration with general society while remaining halachically and traditionally Orthodox. Major issues discussed were the boundaries of art in the Jewish community. “The separation between art and religion is convenient for both sides.” Rabbi Yuval Sherlow stressed during the panel Sprituality, Art, and Halacha. He noted religious figures appreciate not having to deal with the hard issues of what is accepted … Continue Reading
Culture, Controversy and Contributions
Federations in New York and Washington are being pressed to reconsider their funding of agencies whose programming seems critical of Israel, especially in theater and film, as Nathan Guttman reports in the Forward. Like the long-standing disputes over Federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and public broadcasting, they seem to be about money but ultimately center on competing notions of what is good and true. These disagreements are typically framed as a conflict between journalistic or artistic independence on the one hand and accountability to taxpayers or donors on the other. That misstates the issue, however, because no one is attacking artistic freedom in principle. In practice there are always legal and moral limits to personal expression; the question is where to … Continue Reading
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