art Archives - Fritz Ascher Society

Dec 16, 2025

The “Red Orchestra” Anti-Nazi Group in Berlin, 1933-1942
Film Screening and Discussion with Director Stefan Roloff, Berlin (Germany)

Rachel Stern2025-12-16T11:14:45-05:00December 16th, 2025|Events, Lectures|Comments Off on The “Red Orchestra” Anti-Nazi Group in Berlin, 1933-1942
Film Screening and Discussion with Director Stefan Roloff, Berlin (Germany)

Join film director Stefan Roloff in conversation with Rachel Stern about the The Red Orchestra, a Berlin-based resistance group that fought against the Nazis from 1933 to 1942. A special focus will be artist Rainer Küchenmeister (1926-2010), who became a painter while incarcerated at the age of sixteen, inspired by a fellow female inmate and resister who was later beheaded. After the war his work was shown at documenta among other venues. Between January 21 and 29, you can view The Red Orchestra on your home device. A link will be provided to all who register: REGISTER HERE WATCH THE TRAILER: The Red Orchestra (2003) is a documentary by Stefan [...]

Dec 16, 2025

Under Il Duce’s Shadow:
Italian Art and Artists During the Fascist Regime
Presentation by Nicola Lucchi, PhD, New York (NY)

Rachel Stern2026-01-14T16:27:59-05:00December 16th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Under Il Duce’s Shadow:
Italian Art and Artists During the Fascist Regime
Presentation by Nicola Lucchi, PhD, New York (NY)

Italian artistic life under Mussolini was defined less by rigid prescriptions than by a continuous negotiation between competing aesthetic and political demands. Italy, the birthplace of Futurism, had long experimented with modernist innovation, and elements of that movement’s rhetoric and visual language found sympathetic audiences within the fascist state. At the same time, powerful factions within the regime promoted a return to classicism, academicism, and the revival of Italy’s artistic past. The government’s cultural policy therefore oscillated between these poles, attempting to reconcile—and ultimately absorb—contradictory artistic currents into the fascist body politic. Image above: Xanti Schawinsky, Sì , 1934. Artists responded in very different ways: some worked with the regime [...]

Nov 25, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter DECEMBER 2025

Rachel Stern2025-11-28T14:22:03-05:00November 25th, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter DECEMBER 2025

Dear Friends, It is almost Thanksgiving here in the US. And I thank you for being part of our community. Your interest and engagement, your questions and comments, your ideas and support have helped shape who we are today. And it's been a productive year - not over yet! - with wonderful long-term and new partners. I'll address the exhibitions and other projects another time. In 20 virtual and in-person events we have discovered and discussed incredible art - some created in harrowing circumstances. We have commemorated and celebrated the art and their creators, who can inspire us all. The decisions they were confronted with and their life stories are as relevant as ever. Thank you to the [...]

Nov 12, 2025

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

Rachel Stern2025-12-12T14:56:12-05:00November 12th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|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. The four protagonist families all made an important cultural and economic contribution to France. Image above: Detail of book cover The four protagonist families all made an important cultural and economic contribution to France. The Bader/Heilbronn/Meyer family were founders of the French department store, Galeries Lafayette. Their entire art collections were looted by the German ERR (Reichsleiter Rosenberg [...]

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 Stern2025-12-17T15:26:16-05:00November 4th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|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. Image above: Katja Meirowsky, Photo of cabaret performance at the jazz club “Die Badewanne” [“The Bathtub”] in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, 1949/50. 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 [...]

Oct 28, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter NOVEMBER 2025

Rachel Stern2026-01-05T06:30:29-05:00October 28th, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter NOVEMBER 2025

Dear Friends, It is getting chillier outside! Perfect to visit an exhibition or sit down at your computer with a hot cup of coffee or tea, or lunch, and listen to one of our virtual events: This month, we celebrate two Austrian-born artists: costume designer Ruth Morleyon her 100th birthday (November 19 virtual event), and ceramist Vally Wieselthier, whose work is on view at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York (featured exhibition). We commemorate the so-called Kristallnacht (The night of broken glass) - the coordinated series of violent anti-Jewish pogroms that took place throughout Nazi Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland on November 9–10, 1938. As fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors live among us, we continue to focus on [...]

Oct 23, 2025

Flight or Fight? Artists in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
Presentation by Rachel Stern, New York
Kupferberg Holocaust Center @ Queensborough Community College, Queens, NY

Rachel Stern2025-12-09T06:49:04-05:00October 23rd, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Flight or Fight? Artists in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945
Presentation by Rachel Stern, New York
Kupferberg Holocaust Center @ Queensborough Community College, Queens, NY

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 Stern2025-11-21T07:00:38-05:00October 23rd, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|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. [...]

Sep 29, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter OCTOBER 2025

Rachel Stern2026-01-04T06:01:04-05:00September 29th, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter OCTOBER 2025

Dear Friends, September isn't over yet, and our programming isn't either, with the virtual event about the architect of the Knesset, Ossip Klarwein, re-scheduled to happen tomorrow. For the Jews among us, the High Holy Days will dominate this month, a time to pause, to look inward, and to recommit ourselves to the values of compassion, justice, and peace. At the Fritz Ascher Society, we continue to feature untold stories of artists marginalized and persecuted by the German Nazi regime, and inspire conversations and discussions of high relevance today. To watch the stories told in past events, you can visit our YouTube channel @fritzaschersociety, or our online exhibition IDENTITY, ART AND MIGRATION, which now includes the artist Samson [...]

Sep 2, 2025

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter SEPTEMBER 2025

Rachel Stern2025-12-29T06:24:44-05:00September 2nd, 2025|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter SEPTEMBER 2025

Dear Friends, Happy September! This month, we continue our exploration of the work and life of the German-born artist Samson Schames (1898-1967), who we first discussed on August 27th - you can find the link to the recording below. On September 17th, our virtual event will focus on friends and family. By then, the exhibition at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York will have opened, and the publication date of the addition of Samson Schames to our online exhibition "Identity, Art and Migration" will be announced. But first, we'll start with the Hungarian-born artist Theodore Fried: WEDNESDAY, September 3, 12:00PM EDT online Theodore Fried (1902-1980): In Hiding and Beyond Presentation by Sofia [...]

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? [...]