"Voice, Image, Gesture: Selections from the Collection 1945-2000"
2001-03-25 until 2001-08-05
Jewish Museum
New York, NY, USA United States of America

Voice, image, gesture. These terms represent three areas of The Jewish Museum's collection-broadcast media, fine arts, and ceremonial objects. Created since1945, the works in this exhibition reflect a diversity of perspectives on Jewish history and contemporary culture.

Within the multiplicity of The Jewish Museum's collection stirs the conviction that Jewish history is not a singular history. Traditional Jewish teaching is informed by the practice of midrash-the interpretation of law and contemporary life. This exhibition mirrors the complex nature of Jewish identity, wherein the tradition of interpretation is reinscribed in the act of remembering, questioning, and reconstituting the shared and subjective contexts that commemorate and explicate the past.

These works and objects confront history, visualize the spaces of memory, question the boundaries between abstraction and representation, and enact ritual. Artists position themselves, either directly or indirectly, within historical and contemporary narratives, as they shape into discourses the fragments of memory, myth, and story.

IMAGE:
Harriete Estel Berman
(American, b. 1952)
Tzedakah (alms container)
San Mateo, California, 199
Pre-printed steel with aluminum rivets;
installation of 50 envelopes
Each envelope: 3 1/2 x 6 1/4 x 1/2;
entire installation: 42 x 35 x 1/2
The Jewish Museum, New York: Museum purchase;
Judaica Endowment Acquisitions Fund

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of New York

Other Important Exhibitions in New York