Art

Content type
Collection
Black and white checkered stars and photo of folded napkin

Oma Irene's Napkin

Aviva Schilowitz

Particular emphasis is put on setting the table for these occasions. So much of my Jewish and familial identity is tied to these meals.

A-WA

Happy Mizrahi Heritage Month!

Jen Richler

Celebrate Mizrahi Heritage Month by checking out some of our favorite JWA content by and about Mizrahi women. 

Letter from Nāzuk bat Yosef

A Millennium of Jewish Women’s Voices

Sarah Bunin Benor
Abby Graham

HUC-JIR's Jewish Language Project shares their recent exhibit highlighting Jewish women’s voices throughout history in twenty Diaspora Jewish languages.

Madron Gallery in Chicago launches "Growing Up Jewish—Art and Storytelling," by Jacqueline Kott-Wolle

October 23, 2019

Jacqueline Kott-Wolle first displayed her series Growing Up Jewish—Art and Storytelling in 2019 in Chicago. This series celebrates the intergenerational experience of Kott-Wolle's family after relocating to North America as a result of the Holocaust. Her lively paintings illuminate the inner workings of her family’s contemporary Jewish experience and celebrate her community.  

Photographs of Miriam Niestat, her family, and a loom collaged on woven green background

Weaving My Asymmetrical Jewish Identity

Miriam Niestat

My uncle had the idea that maybe I could weave a tallis of my own. But I didn’t want it to somehow invalidate my bat mitzvah.

Topics: Crafts, Family, Ritual
Photo of wall covered in hamsas, on a yellow patterned background.

Unity through Symbolism: The Hamsa

Leila Nuri

As a teen with a Muslim-Palestinian father and a Jewish-American mother, the hamsa has always meant a lot to me.

Topics: Crafts, Family, Palestine
Mental Maps—Involuntary Memory by Penny Hes Yassour

From the Archive: Penny Yassour, "Mental Maps—Involuntary Memory"

Deborah Dash Moore
Mimi Jessica Brown Wooten

The Posen Library shares Penny Hes Yassour's depiction of a 1938 German railway map.

Muriel Pokross

Project
Women Whose Lives Span the Century

Ellen Rovner interviewed Muriel Pokross on December 20, 1996, and June 30, 1997, in Belmont, Massachusetts, for the Women Whose Lives Spanned the Century Oral History Project. Pokross reflects on her experiences during significant historical events, her efforts to aid Jewish refugees, and her career as a rehabilitation counselor, while emphasizing the passing down of values and her close family bonds.

Joshua Mann Pailet

Project
Katrina's Jewish Voices

Rosalind Hinton interviewed Joshua Pailet on August 2, 2007, in New Orleans, as part of the Katrina's Jewish Voices Oral History Project. Pailet reflects on his childhood, artistic journey, the atmosphere of New Orleans, his firsthand experience of Hurricane Katrina, participation in the "Torah rescue," the rebuilding process, the importance of grassroots efforts, and his strengthened Jewish identity

Selma Litman

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Marcie Cohen Ferris interviewed Selma Cohen Litman on July 9, 2002, in Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project. Litman recalls her family history, including her father's journey from Russia to the United States, her mother's immigration, and her childhood memories in Baltimore, as well as experiences working at a Bridal Shop and balancing her career with raising her children in a vibrant Jewish household.

A group of people in three rows in front of a bookstore.

Interview with Stella Levy, The Only Woman at City Lights Bookstore

Emma Breitman

JWA talks with Stella Levy about her appearance in an iconic photo from the 1960s, and how things have changed for women in the literary world since then. 

Elsie Miller Legum

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Elaine Eff interviewed Elsie Miller Legum on April 19, 2001, in Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the Weaving Women’s Words Oral History Project. Legum talks about her childhood in a large family, strict upbringing, Jewish observance, neighborhoods in Baltimore, elopement, work at Miller Brothers, second marriage, and reflections on friendship, family, and Judaism.

Susan Leader

Project
DAVAR: Vermont Jewish Women's History Project

Sandra Stillman Gartner and Ann Buffum interviewed Susan Leader on July 23, 2008, in Andover, Vermont, as part of DAVAR's Oral History Project. Leader discusses her family's history, her upbringing in rural Vermont, her passion for pottery, her education, and her reflections on raising children in the Jewish tradition.

A white cloth with the words "Gut Morgen" (Good Morning in Yiddish) followed by the initials R.L.

Restoring Hope Along with a Family Heirloom

Sheila Solomon Shotwell

Restoring my great aunt’s linen is a tribute to her for embracing my non-Jewish mother, in defiance of her family.

Topics: Crafts, Marriage, Prayer
Figurine of woman playing drum

From the Archive: Woman Playing Frame Drum

Deborah Dash Moore
Mimi Jessica Brown Wooten

The Posen Library shares a nearly 3000-year-old figurine of a woman playing a hand-drum.

Topics: Sculpture, Music, Bible

Olga Shmuylovich

Project
Soviet Jewry

Alexandra Kiosse interviewed Olga Shmuylovich on July 24, 2016, in Boston, Massachusetts, as part of the Soviet Jewry Oral History Collection. Shmuylovich details her upbringing in the Soviet Union, her involvement in the Jewish artist movement, her artistic journey under the mentorship of Solomon Levin, her immigration to the United States, her artistic career in Boston, and her inspirations from Jewish culture and history in her artwork.

Alan Gerson

Project
Katrina's Jewish Voices

Rosalind Hinton interviewed Alan Gerson on August 3, 2007, in New Orleans, as part of the Katrina's Jewish Voices Oral History Project. Gerson discusses his family history, childhood as a Jew in New Orleans, college experience, artistic pursuits, evacuation and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, emotional toll, community support for artists, disillusionment with the government, and a vivid memory of an abandoned beach ball after the storm.

Roz Chast

One of New York’s most distinct Jewish cultural voices, Roz Chast is most famous for her New Yorker cartoons over the past four decades. Her works range from whimsical, irreverent, and quirky to poignant and heartbreaking, and she is widely considered one of the most comically ingenious and satirically edgy visual interpreters of everyday life.

Carolyn Blumenthal Danz

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Roz Bornstein interviewed Carolyn Danz on May 11 and May 16, 2001, in Seattle, Washington, as part of the Weaving Women’s Words project. Danz shares her family history, childhood experiences with volunteer work, a career as a businesswoman, single parenthood, involvement in Jewish and civic organizations, and her active life, including founding the Northwest Croquet Association.

Painting by Siona Benjamin featuring a woman as the body of a menorah, with seven branches coming out as arms

From the Archive: 'Tikkun Ha-Olam, Finding Home Series #46' by Siona Benjamin

Deborah Dash Moore
Mimi Jessica Brown Wooten

The Posen Library shares a painting by Bene Israel Jewish artist Siona Benjamin. 

Frieda Piepsch Sondland

Project
Weaving Women's Words

Roz Bornstein interviewed Frieda Sondland on May 1 and 17, 2001, in Mercer Island, Washington, as part of the Weaving Women's Words Oral History Project. Frieda recounts her family's escape from Nazi Germany, their journey to South America, and their eventual settlement in Seattle, highlighting community involvement, and the challenges of parenting and aging.

Philanthropist and artist Rose Henriques is born

August 17, 1889

Rose (Loewe) Henriques spent her adult life in London's East End, providing social welfare offerings to the largely Jewish population and documenting the area’s experience of the tumultuous early twentieth century in her acclaimed paintings.

Cartoon of woman in front of her painting, look at camera

A New Film About Charlotte Salomon Strips Her Soul from Her Art

Amelia Merrill

What could have been an innovative look at a forgotten artist instead becomes another cookie-cutter biopic.

Topics: Painting, Holocaust, Film

Anita Brenner

Anita Brenner, an anthropologist, journalist, and art historian, was born in Aguascalientes, Mexico, to Jewish immigrants from Latvia and grew up in Mexico and Texas. She was an important part of the Mexican Renaissance cultural scene, and the internal tension she experienced as Mexican, American, and Jewish provided her with insight into both Mexican and Jewish identity.

Surrealist Photographer Claude Cahun is Born

October 25, 1894

On October 25, 1894, queer Jewish Surrealist photographer and writer Lucy Schwob, who later adopted the name Claude Cahun, was born in Nantes, France. Cahun would later participate in Paris’ Surrealist movement in the 1920s and 1930s, creating photographs and written work that challenged binary ideas of gender, sexuality, and the self.

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