The Three Exiles of the German-born artist Samson Schames (1898-1967)
Presentation by Annika Friedman (Germany), Rachel Dickson, PhD (UK) and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD (USA)

In this virtual event, the three exiles of the German-born artist Samson Schames (1898-1967) will be discussed. Annika Friedman (Germany) will elaborate on the artist’s beginnings in Frankfurt, Rachel Dickson, PhD (UK) will give an insight into the work he made in British exile, and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD (USA) will speak about the work he created in his new home, New York. The presentations will be followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A.

Samson Schames came from a long-established Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). With the support of his uncle, renowned gallery owner Ludwig Schames, he made his way into the 1920s art scene and began his training as a painter, graphic artist, and stage designer. Schames’ designs, drawings, and oil paintings from his time in Frankfurt testify to his deep connection to his hometown and her landscapes.

Image above: Samson Schames, Railway Bridge, n.d. Oil on cardboard, 23.8 x 28 in. Jewish Museum Frankfurt

If you are interested but can’t attend the event, please register anyways and you will receive the link to the recording.

After the National Socialists rose to power in 1933, Schames was only able to exhibit his works in exhibitions of the Jüdischer Kulturbund or in his own studio. In 1937, at least seven of his works were confiscated from public collections as part of the Nazi campaign against “Degenerate Art.”

Schames fled to England via Holland after the Kristallnacht pogroms of November 1938. In 1940, he was interned in Huyton Camp, near Liverpool, as a so-called ‘enemy alien’. After his release he exhibited extensively in London and became known for his mosaics in which he incorporated broken and found materials scavenged from bombsites.

In 1948, Schames immigrated to the USA, where he continued his career until he died in 1967.

Annika Friedman has been part of the Jewish Museum Frankfurt team since 2021, initially as curatorial assistant and since 2022 as the curatorial project manager for the permanent exhibition in the Rothschild Palais. In addition to “Samson Schames: Fragments of Exile” she most recently co-curated the 2022/23 exhibition Back into the Light. Four Women Artists – Their Works. Their Paths” which detailed the lives and careers of four artists whose paths intersected and subsequently diverged in Frankfurt after the rise of the National Socialists.
She received her Master in Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa in Israel and her Bachelor at University of British Columbia in Canada. During her studies she was the assistant curator of the art exhibition “Arrivals, Departures – The Oscar Ghez Collection,” and a project coordinator in the archives of the Hecht Museum (Haifa).

Dr Rachel Dickson is Consulting Editor, Ben Uri Research Unit, formerly Head of Curatorial Services, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2011-2020). Her research and curatorial outputs focus primarily on Jewish émigré artists and designers in 20th-21st century Britain, particularly those who fled Nazi-occupied Europe. A committee member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, and honorary advisor to The Archives of Polish and Eastern European Emigration, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland, she has written and spoken widely. In 2023 her biographical chapter on émigré art historian, Dr Helen Rosenau, was published in Griselda Pollock’s Woman in Art: Helen Rosenau’s ‘Little Book’ of 1944 (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art/Yale University Press), a publication which received the award for a multi-authored volume from the Historians of British Art in 2025.

Ori Z. Soltes teaches at Georgetown University across a range of disciplines. He is former Director of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. His most recent exhibition, co-curated with Rachel Stern, is Identity, Art, and Migration, which includes the work of Samson Schames. As co-founding Director of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project, he has spent twenty-five years focused on the issue of Nazi-plundered art. Soltes has authored or edited 31 books and scores of articles and exhibition catalogue essays. Recent volumes include The Ashen Rainbow: Essays on the Arts and the Holocaust and Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish art and Architecture.

Moderator Rachel Stern is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art in New York.