Fritz Ascher Society
SURVIVAL AND INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY:
The Arts of Alice Lok Cahana, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana and Kitra Cahana
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, Portland, Oregon
Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
724 NW Davis St, Portland, OR, United States
Survival and Intimations of Immortality: The Art of Alice Lok Cahana, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, and Kitra Cahana is a unique and powerful exhibition that explores the role of art and creativity, bringing the past into the present by focusing on three generations of artists from the same family. Alice Lok Cahana (1929-2017) was a Holocaust survivor who pledged she would become an artist if she survived the war. Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, Alice’s oldest son, is a poet and survivor of a major stroke. Kitra Cahana, Ronnie’s daughter, is a filmmaker and photographer. This exhibition reveals how the tragedy of the Holocaust impacted multiple generations of a family and how each member transformed the destructive trauma of the Shoah into acts [...]
Tamara de Lempicka: Modern Maverick
Presentation by Alison de Lima Greene, Houston (TX)
ONLINE
VA, United States
Join Alison de Lima Greene, MFAH curator, for an introduction to the remarkable arc of Lempicka’s career as she rose to the pinnacle of café society in 1920s and 1930s Paris, and her American odyssey after she fled Europe in 1939. Capturing the glamour and vitality of 1920s postwar Paris and the cosmopolitan sheen of Hollywood celebrity, Tamara de Lempicka (1894–1980) infused her paintings with a brilliant sense of fashion, design, and the theatrical. Currently the subject of the first retrospective devoted to her work in the United States, organized by the San Francisco Fine Arts Museums and currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Lempicka’s singular contribution to the history of modernism is only now [...]
Victor Brauner’s Departures and Returns
Presentation by Irina Cărăbaș, Bucharest (Romania)
followed by a conversation with Nicola Baird, PhD, London (UK)
ONLINE
VA, United States
Born in Piatra Neamț, Romania into a Jewish family, Victor Brauner (1903-1966) took part in shaping several avant-garde groups in Bucharest since his early twenties. By the mid-1930s, he oscillated between Bucharest and Paris, where he nurtured and solidified his commitment to surrealism. During this time, Brauner also began exploring the representation of the human body—an investigation that he would develop in highly diverse directions throughout his life, always maintaining a connection with surrealist concepts. He later left Romania due to the rise of antisemitism never to return. His forced hiding in France during World War II became a period of experimentation with new materials and a deep dive into esotericism. The end of the war brought both personal [...]
THE ART SPY. The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
Book talk by Michelle Young, New York and Paris
ONLINE
VA, United States
In this book talk, author Michelle Young will present WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland (1898–1980), an unlikely heroine who infiltrated the Nazi leadership in Paris during World War II to save the world’s most treasured artworks. Rose Vallant was a curator at the Jeu de Paume Museum in Paris when the Nazis invaded France, occupied the museum, and began using it as a sorting center for thousands of pieces of stolen art from across Europe. Valland made herself appear as nonthreatening and essential as possible, retaining her position in the museum for years while keeping meticulous secret records of the provenance and destination of every piece of art. Her gathered intelligence enabled the recovery of hundreds of thousands of [...]
DEAR MISS PERKINS.
A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany
Book talk by Rebecca Brenner Graham, Ph.D.
ONLINE
VA, United States
Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House, and as a firsthand witness to the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist fire, shaped her determination to advocate for immigrants and refugees. As Secretary of Labor, she wrestled with widespread antisemitism and isolationism, finding creative ways to work around quotas and restrictive immigration laws. Diligent, resilient, empathetic, yet steadfast, she persisted on behalf of the desperate when others refused to act. Book talk by Rebecca Brenner Graham, Ph.D. Image above: Frances Perkins at her desk, 1938. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration, College Park REGISTER FOR ONLINE EVENT Frances Perkins, age four. Courtesy Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special [...]
