art Archives - Fritz Ascher Society

Nov 12, 2025

Looted! The Nazi Art Plunder of Jewish Families in France
Book talk by Peter Elliott (France)

Rachel Stern2025-11-12T08:11:32-05:00November 12th, 2025|Events, Lectures|Comments Off on Looted! The Nazi Art Plunder of Jewish Families in France
Book talk by Peter Elliott (France)

In this book talk Peter Elliott speaks about the lives and art collections of four French Jewish families, whose art was looted and whose businesses were confiscated during the Nazi Occupation of France (1940-44). He speaks about their businesses and art collections, and the journeys of their paintings during wartime and beyond. Image above: Detail of book cover REGISTER HERE If you are interested but can’t attend the event, please 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. Max Heilbronn and Raoul Mayer, 1926 © All rights reserved [...]

Nov 4, 2025

Resistance and Art:
The “Red Orchestra” Anti-Nazi Group in Berlin
Presentation by Stefan Roloff, Berlin (Germany)
School of Visual Arts, 133/141 West 21st Street, Room 101C, New York, NY

Rachel Stern2025-11-12T08:26:27-05:00November 4th, 2025|Events, Lectures|Comments Off on Resistance and Art:
The “Red Orchestra” Anti-Nazi Group in Berlin
Presentation by Stefan Roloff, Berlin (Germany)
School of Visual Arts, 133/141 West 21st Street, Room 101C, New York, NY

BFA Visual and Critical Studies, the SVA Honors Program and the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art host a lecture by painter and filmmaker Stefan Roloff, exploring the visual art and resistance of three members of the "Red Orchestra" underground anti-Nazi group. Finger food served; RSVP required. The so-called “Red Orchestra” fought against the Third Reich within Germany from 1933 to 1942. The Gestapo labeled them as Communists and traitors, a theory that was upheld by Allied Secret Services until recently. Historians now officially recognize their work as that of the largest and most diverse civil anti-Nazi resistance group. The participants held a variety of political and religious beliefs while representing the gamut of German society. [...]

Oct 23, 2025

Flight or Fight? Artists in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
Presentation by Rachel Stern, New York

Rachel Stern2025-10-23T08:03:39-04:00October 23rd, 2025|Events, Lectures|Comments Off on Flight or Fight? Artists in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
Presentation by Rachel Stern, New York

Between 1933 and 1945, the National Socialist regime controlled artistic work in Germany. Join Rachel Stern, founding director of the Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art, for a discussion about the system of fear and control installed by the Nazis, its impact on the national cultural landscape, and artists’ strategies of survival. This event is part of the 2025-26 KHC and National Endowment for the Humanities Colloquium, “Resistance, Resilience and Reinvention: Artists and Academics Escaping Nazism.” It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center in White Plains; the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora at Northeastern Illinois University; the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human [...]

Oct 23, 2025

From Vienna to Movies:
Costume Designer Ruth Morley at 100, a birthday commemoration.
Presentation by Melissa Hacker and Susan Gammie

Rachel Stern2025-10-23T06:46:31-04:00October 23rd, 2025|Events, Lectures|Comments Off on From Vienna to Movies:
Costume Designer Ruth Morley at 100, a birthday commemoration.
Presentation by Melissa Hacker and Susan Gammie

In this virtual event, the life and work of Costume Designer Ruth Morley will be discussed by her daughter Melissa Hacker and Susan Gammie, her assistant, protégé and close friend. Ruth Morley (1925-1991) fled her childhood home in Vienna on a Kindertransport as an unaccompanied child refugee, arrived in New York City as a teenager, and became a noted costume designer whose career spanned decades and disciplines, including dance, opera, theater, film and television. Her film credits include American classics Tootsie, Annie Hall, Taxi Driver, The Chosen, Kramer vs Kramer and The Hustler; her theater, opera and dance credits include Death of Salesman (with Dustin Hoffman), The Threepenny Opera, Deathtrap, Miracle Worker (stage and film, for the film, she received an Oscar nomination), Billy Budd, the Golem, and many more. Television includes Playing for Time with Vanessa Redgrave and Mussolini with George C [...]

Oct 19, 2025

Confronting the Holocaust in Midcentury American Art
Presentation by Jennifer McComas, Bloomington (Indiana)

Rachel Stern2025-11-12T13:39:10-05:00October 19th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Confronting the Holocaust in Midcentury American Art
Presentation by Jennifer McComas, Bloomington (Indiana)

The Holocaust’s profound impact on midcentury American art has been underrecognized and understudied. Jennifer McComas, curator of the current exhibition Remembrance and Renewal: American Artists and the Holocaust, 1940-1970 at Indiana University’s Eskenazi Museum of Art and primary author of the accompanying catalogue, explores the ways that American artists—American-born, immigrants, refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, and Holocaust survivors—confronted the Holocaust in their work during the war and in the decades just after. Image above: Anna Walinska (American, born England, 1906-1997), Survivors – Exodus, 1958. Oil on canvas, 60 x 84 in. (152.4 x 213.4 cm). Gift of Rosina Rubin, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2023.29. © Atelier Anna Walinska. Photo: Shanti Knight. [...]

Jul 29, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter AUGUST 2025

Rachel Stern2025-11-09T06:20:57-05:00July 29th, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter AUGUST 2025

Dear Friends, Immediately after Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany in 1933 the Nazi government started persecuting Jews. Within months, tens of thousands of Jews left Germany. But soon emigration slowed considerably as visas became impossible to obtain. About 10,000 children were saved by leaving the country on a Kindertransport to Great Britain between December 1, 1938 and September 1, 1939. Later this month, we are screening the documentary My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering the Kindertransports and feature a discussion with Melissa Hacker, the film director. There were also individuals who stood up against the Nazi regime by saving people from persecution. Did you know that Aristides de Sousa Mendes saved artist Tamara DE LEMPICKA's daughter and stepdaughter? [...]

Jul 2, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter JULY 2025

Rachel Stern2025-11-07T10:45:31-05:00July 2nd, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter JULY 2025

Dear Friends, Summer is here! As we are heading for July 4th, I hope you are staying cool in this sweltering heat. Looking for inspiring summer reading, we bring you a virtual book talk about another strong woman: WEDNESDAY, July 9, 12:00PM EDT DEAR MISS PERKINS. A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany Book talk by Rebecca Brenner Graham, Ph.D. REGISTER HERE In this book talk, Rebecca Brenner Graham describes how Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins helped save the lives of countless Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany - without fanfare, and despite powerful opposition. Frances Perkins’s early experiences working in Chicago’s famed Hull House, and as a firsthand [...]

Jun 23, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter JUNE 2025

Rachel Stern2025-06-23T04:46:38-04:00June 23rd, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter JUNE 2025

Dear Friends, Art has the power to enlighten, uplift, and help us recognize our common humanity even when confronted by inhumanity. At FAS, we are constantly inspired by the artwork created by people who were persecuted for their identity or for their art by the German National Socialists and their European Allies 1933-1945. Learning about the strength and resilience of the artists and the moral and ethic values of those who refused to be perpetrators or bystanders helps guide our reflections and actions today. In our 2024 program report you can find out more about our work: PROGRAM REPORT 2024 Five more days in our fundraising campaign to ensure our virtual programming! Every donation will be [...]

Apr 29, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter MAY 2025

Rachel Stern2025-04-29T10:30:15-04:00April 29th, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter MAY 2025

Dear Friends, May is the month during which we celebrate the fifth anniversary of our virtual event series "Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression." You can now find about 150 artist videos on our YouTube channel @fritzaschersociety! Throughout this month, we ask you to donate to the Fritz Ascher Society to enable us to continue this important virtual program, which brings artists to a global audience, who are not widely known because they were persecuted or murdered by the German Nazis. We need to raise $10,000.00 to ensure the continuation of this program. And I am happy to announce that every donation made this month will be matched dollar-for-dollar until we reach that amount, so please: [...]

Apr 2, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter APRIL 2025

Rachel Stern2025-04-29T10:31:47-04:00April 2nd, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter APRIL 2025

Dear Friends, Spring is here, with the energy of renewal and growth and blossoming trees, plants and flowers. Holidays abound, and we honor Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. We have organized fabulous virtual events for you, but first I have a story with a happy ending for you, at least for the art: Pretty exactly a year ago, the reporter and writer Julie Zigoris told the story of artwork that was found on a park bench in San Francisco’s Crane Cove Park in 2022. City employees had rescued the art and found the majority of the artworks to be by the Jewish painter Ary Arcadie Lochakov (1892-1941), a member of the famed School of Paris group that includes [...]

Mar 7, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter MARCH 2025

Rachel Stern2025-04-29T10:32:39-04:00March 7th, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter MARCH 2025

Dear Friends, During these breathtakingly turbulent times, we prepared very diverse online programs for you: we start this month by looking back at US history by discussing immigrant American artist Ben Shahn, then focus on the state of Nazi era art restitution by presenting the much disputed collection of the Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, and conclude the month with a panel discussion of curator Ori Z Soltes, poet Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, and photographer Kitra Cahana about our Portland (OR) exhibition Survival and Intimations of Immortality: The Art of Alice Lok Cahana, Rabbi Ronnie Cahana, and Kitra Cahana, which is on view until May 25. First we present the American artist, Social Realist painter, and child refugee from Tzarist-governed [...]

Mar 6, 2025

Art and Conscience in a Time of Upheaval.
Ben Shahn (1898-1969)
Presentation by Ori Z Soltes, Washington (DC)

Rachel Stern2025-03-12T14:22:13-04:00March 6th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Art and Conscience in a Time of Upheaval.
Ben Shahn (1898-1969)
Presentation by Ori Z Soltes, Washington (DC)

Georgetown University professor Ori Z Soltes will speak about Ben Shahn (1898-1969), who arrived in 1906 as a child to the United States from Tsarist-governed Lithuania. Four years after the Tsarist authorities had exiled his father to Siberia for alleged revolutionary activities, his mother managed to bring the family to New York. There they reconnected with Ben's father who had escaped from Siberia and made it to the US by way of South Africa. Image above: Ben Shahn, Detail of the Mural "The Meaning of Social Security," Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building, Washington, D.C. Within 25 years Shahn emerged as perhaps the key figure in the developing arena of American Social [...]