What If?
Presentation by Ori Z Soltes, PhD, Washington, DC
July 23, 2025 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
| FreeThis image-rich talk by Dr. Ori Z Soltes from Georgetown University in Washington DC will consider some of the many Jewish artists destroyed by the Holocaust who had either begun or were poised to add significant threads to the tapestry of twentieth century visual art. Some are now well-known and others remain obscure—but what if artists like Charlotte Solomon and Felix Nussbaum or like Erna Dem and Fritz Taussig had survived to do more art? What additional significant contributions might they have made?
Image above: Bedřich Fritta (Friedrich Taussig), Rear Entrance, Theresienstadt Ghetto, 1941–1944. India ink and wash on paper, 51 x 36.5 cm
Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem. Gift of the Prague Committee for Documentation, courtesy of Ze’ev and Alisa Shek, Caesarea, Israel
If you can’t attend, register anyways and you will receive the link to the recording. Participating in the event enables you to ask questions and be part of the discussion following the talk.
Felix Nussbaum, Self Portrait with Jewish Passport [Selbstbildnis mit Judenpass], ca. 1943, oil on canvas, 56 x 49 cm. Felix-Nussbaum-Haus im Museumsquartier Osnabrück, Loan from Niedersächsischen Sparkassenstiftung
Oskar Schlemmer, Bauhaus Stairway, 1932. Oil on canvas, 63.9 in × 45.0 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York Inv. 597.1942
Ori Z Soltes teaches art history, theology, philosophy and political history in the Center for Jewish Civilization at Georgetown University and is the former Director and Curator of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. He is co-curating the exhibition. What If?, with Marc Masurovsky, which is scheduled to open in 2028 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
This event is part of the online series “Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression.”
