Art

Content type
Collection
Chagall's Hommage à Apollinaire - woman and man's body merged together

This Chagall Piece Reflects My Nonbinary Gender

Anne Vetter

This Chagall piece invites me to see myself as split and whole in the same moment.

Photo of Riva Lehrer on left and cover of her book Golem Girl on right

Interview with Riva Lehrer, Artist and Author of "Golem Girl"

Jen Richler

JWA talks to artist Riva Lehrer about her recent memoir, Golem Girl, and the way her disabled, queer, and Jewish identities intersect.

Collage with Image of Molly Picon from "Yidn Mitn Fidl," Background of Wallpaper of Shooting Stars

Activism Through Art: Molly Picon's Legacy

Abigail Gilman

I think about Molly Picon, and how she utilized her love of storytelling to bring laughter to those who needed it, to foster pride and compassion in the Jewish community, and to fight to keep Yiddish theater alive.

Lillian Simon Freehof

Lillian Simon Freehof (1906-2004) was a leader in developing transcription services for people with visual impairments and blindness, working with Sisterhood volunteers at Rodef Shalom Congregation in Pittsburgh, PA, and, at the national level, with the Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (now WRJ).  She also wrote books and plays for children and young adults and books on needlework and Jewish festivals for adults. She was the wife of Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof.

Vera Frances Salomons

An elusive figure, Vera Salomon, who belonged to the interconnected network of Anglo-Jewish families known as “the Cousinhood,” is best remembered for founding and funding the L.A. Mayer Museum of Islamic Art in Jerusalem. This was the culmination of a longstanding philanthropic commitment to Jewish life in what would become the State of Israel.

Image of Star of David Necklace Over Star of David Background

How My Star of David Necklace Helped Me Understand My Jewish Identity

Sofia Isaias-Day

The Star of David and its history helps me understand the different layers of my Jewish identity; the symbol represents the different cultures we’ve embraced as part of the diaspora.

Collage of Torah, Jade Chai Necklace, and Image of Amanda Xinhui Malnik

My Necklace is a Symbol of My Jewish-Chinese Feminist Identity

Amanda Xinhui Malnik

My jade chai necklace has become my most prized possession as a Jewish-Chinese feminist.

Episode 66: Eye to Eye with Joan Biren (Transcript)

Episode 66: Eye to Eye with Joan Biren (Transcript)

Episode 66: Eye to Eye with Joan Biren

In 1971, photographer Joan Biren, also known as JEB, started doing something revolutionary: documenting the everyday lives of lesbians. This was an era when you could lose everything—your job, your apartment, even your kids— if people knew you were gay. Joan published her first book Eye To Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, in 1979, and the book was reissued this year. In this episode of Can We Talk?, Judith Rosenbaum talks with Joan about her photography, and the way her Jewish, lesbian, and feminist identities have intersected throughout her life.

Zoya Cherkassky

Zoya Cherkassky (b. 1976 in Kyiv, Ukraine) is a prominent Israeli artist. She works in a range of media and styles, synthesizing traditional painting techniques with vernacular tools and moving freely between allusions to the European canon and contemporary art. Her work is marked by humor, irony, and satire and at times has been controversial.

Photo of Mirushe Zylali in her handmade entari

Reinventing Fashion: What’s Old Is New Again

Mirushe "Mira" Zylali

Fashioning my own dress in a traditional Ottoman style helped me reclaim my multilayered roots.

Collage with Three Women in Underwear; Background of Squares overlayed with underwear

Commercial Femininity: A Jewish Reckoning with Victoria's Secret's Legacy

Goldi Lieberperson

Growing up, Victoria's Secret models represented my default (and only) view of femininity and what it means to be an adult woman.

The Berber Bride in the Salon, by Esther Benmaman, 2002

Rethinking the Canon: Today's Moroccan Jewish Women Painters

Tamara Kohn

Who belongs in the canon? And who gets to tell the stories of Moroccan Jews?

Topics: Art, Jewish History

Gertrud Bing

Art historian Gertrud Bing was a key figure at the Warburg Institute, a research library focused on the afterlife of antiquity in the art of the Renaissance. Beginning as personal assistant to the Institute’s founder, Aby Warburg, and ultimately becoming its director, Bing helped develop and disseminate iconology, a methodology that investigates the social, historical, and cultural meanings of themes and subjects in artworks and that transformed twentieth-century art history.

Retrospective Exhibit of work by Sonia Delaunay opens in Buffalo

February 2, 1980

On this day, the largest survey to date of Ukraine-born French artist Sonia Delaunay’s (1885-1979) work opened at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York.

Ruth Adler Schnee wins the Kresge Eminent Artist Award

January 28, 2015

On January 28, 2015, at the age of 91, Ruth Adler Schnee was honored with the prestigious Kresge Eminent Artist Award in recognition of her influential career as one of the founding figures of contemporary textile design in the United States.

Aline Kominsky-Crumb

Aline Kominsky-Crumb was a pioneer of the autobiographical comics genre and a leading figure in the feminist underground comics movement. Her career as a cartoonist began in 1972, when she joined the Wimmen’s Comix collective in San Francisco and published her first comic Goldie. A Neurotic Women. She went on to author, publish and co-edit several books and magazines, including the comics anthology Love That Bunch (1990), and the graphic Memoir Need More Love (2007).

Sionah Tagger

Sionah Tagger was one of the earliest modern Israeli women artists to have been born in Erez Israel. She played an important part in the development of modern painting there in the 1920s and 1930s and was among the first members of Israel’s Association of Painters and Sculptors and a regular participant in its exhibitions.

Judy Cassab

Vienna-born, Budapest-trained painter Judy Cassab, a survivor of the Holocaust, arrived in Australia in 1951. She became one of the country’s best-known and best-loved artists, primarily for her portraits but also for her depictions of Australia’s bright interior.

EL Konigsburg

Elaine Lobl Konigsburg is best remembered from her many beloved children’s novels, including The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley and Me, Elizbeth, and The View from Saturday. Her novels and her characters reflect the angst of growing up in a middle-class world and finding your way, no matter where you come from.

Nan Goldin

Starting in the 1970s, Nan Goldin used her camera to document her own life and that of her friends, her alternative family. Her pictures revealed intimacy and violence, love and abuse, sexuality and addiction, in the downtown punk scene of New York in the 1980s, a world subsequently devastated by AIDS. She adopted a slide show format to be a mirror to her friends, and ended up mirroring their lives to the outside world.

Vered Nissim

Multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and art consultant Vered Nissim was born in Israel to Iraqi immigrant parents. She identifies as a Mizrahi feminist; her art revolves around her gender, ethnic, and class identities, and she aims to give voice to marginalized women in Israeli society.

Shula Keshet

Shula Keshet is an Israeli Mizrahi feminist activist, an artist, and a curator. Her activism strives for justice for underprivileged women and men in Israel; as a Mizrahi feminist artist and curator, she has created several exhibitions.

Audrey Flack

The only female member of the founding group of photorealists, New York-born painter and sculptor Audrey Flack is especially recognized for the feminine content in her art. Her feminist sensibilities manifest in both her pioneering paintings, which often consider stereotypes of womanhood, and her sculptures, frequently depicting goddesses and other strong female figures. Flack’s work appears in prominent collections around the world.

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