DSR Lecture Series: "Temporary Exhibitions, Permanent Controversies, and Jewish Museums"
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Abstract
Temporary exhibitions are sites of experimentation for new arguments and modes of curation. Sometimes, experiments can go wrong, and a temporary exhibition becomes a site of contestation with outreach far beyond the museum’s walls. From the infamous “Harlem on My Mind” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the Enola Gay debacle at the National Air and Space Museum, controversies about exhibition offer insight into the impact of the museum as an institution. This talk focuses on a similar phenomenon in Jewish museums by analyzing museums in Vienna, Warsaw, and Berlin. Taken together, they show how temporary exhibitions produce debates about the meaning of Jewishness and the place of Jews in twenty-first century Europe.
About the speaker
Yaniv Feller teaches religion and Jewish Studies at the University of Florida. His book The Jewish Imperial Imagination: Leo Baeck and German-Jewish Thought was a finalist for the AJS book award in the category of Philosophy & Jewish Thought. Feller and Paul Nahme, another DSR alumnus, edited Covenantal Thinking: Essays on the Philosophy and Theology of David Novak. A former curator at the Jewish Museum Berlin, Yaniv’s current project is titled Jew in a Box.