Rachel Stern2025-08-27T17:31:03-04:00August 12th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In this virtual event, a transatlantic panel discusses the artist Samson Schames. Annika Friedman (Germany) elaborates on the artist’s beginnings in Frankfurt, Rachel Dickson, PhD (UK) gives an insight into the work he made in British exile, and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD (USA) speaks about the work he created in his new home, New York. The presentations are followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A. Image above: Samson Schames, Granite Quarry No. 1, 1958. Casein on board, 20.75 in. x 26.25 in. Leo Baeck Institute New York 2007.97 Samson Schames was a German-Jewish artist born in 1898 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, into a prominent Jewish family involved in the textile business. He initially trained [...]
Rachel Stern2025-08-27T18:50:03-04:00August 11th, 2025|Events, Lectures|
In this virtual event, a distinguished panel comprising family members, friends, and their descendants from New York will share memories of the German-born artist Samson Schames (1898-1967). His work, which blends modernist aesthetics with spiritual and historical depth, is recognized for its innovative technique and poignant reflections on exile, memory, and identity. Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, he fled Nazi persecution to England in 1939 and later emigrated to the United States with his wife, Edith, in 1948. Image above: Samson Schames, Blowing the Shofar, c. 1956. Shards of glass, polychrome, layered in relief, 25.4 x 29.7 in. (64.5 x 75.5 cm). Jewish Museum Frankfurt REGISTER HERE If you are interested but can’t attend the [...]
Rachel Stern2025-08-27T19:09:04-04:00August 4th, 2025|Events, Lectures|
This presentation will explore the historical background and creative works of Hungarian-born Jewish artist Theodore Fried (1902-1980). He was educated at the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts and moved to Vienna in 1924 and to Paris in 1925. He met and married his first wife Anna and his son Christopher was born in 1928. That same year, the artist had his first one-man show, and was included in important shows in Vienna, Prague, Berlin, and Paris. Image above: Detail of Theodore Fried, Self Portrait, not dated. Oil on canvas. Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art, Tulsa (OK) REGISTER HERE If you are interested but can’t attend the event, please register anyways and you will receive the [...]
Rachel Stern2025-08-08T09:57:36-04:00July 28th, 2025|Events, Lectures|
In this virtual event, Jacqueline Hénard will speak about the architect Ossip (also: Joseph) Klarwein (1893-1970), a pioneer of the avant-garde, whose works – including iconic buildings such as the church at Hohenzollernplatz in Berlin and the Knesset in Jerusalem – built bridges between expressionist tradition and radical modernism. Ossip Klarwein was born in 1893 in Warsaw. Due to pogroms in the collapsing Russian Empire, he emigrated with his parents and siblings to Hesse in 1905. Klarwein became an architect, with professional focuses in Berlin and Hamburg. In 1924, he married Martha Elsa Kumme, a Protestant opera singer. They had a son, Matthias. Image above: Ossip Klarwein, Knesset in Jerusalem (Israeli parliament). Photo front side, 2022. Wikimedia Commons Clema12, CC BY-SA 4.0 REGISTER HERE If [...]
Rachel Stern2025-08-20T18:00:52-04:00July 11th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Join film director Melissa Hacker in conversation with Rachel Stern about My Knees Were Jumping; Remembering the Kindertransports. In the nine months just prior to World War II close to 10,000 children were sent, without their parents, to the United Kingdom from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland. These children were rescued by the Kindertransport movement. Most of the children never saw their parents again. Those courageous parents who had the strength to send their children off to an unknown fate soon boarded transports taking them to concentration camps. The story of the Kindertransports is an extraordinary piece of history - untold far too long. The children who lived the trauma and terror of being uprooted from secure homes tell [...]
Rachel Stern2025-07-10T16:00:13-04:00July 10th, 2025|Events, Lectures|
When the Degenerate Art exbibit opened in Munich in the summer of 1937, works by notable foreign modernists were denigrated along with German artists. Henri Matisse’s Blue Window (1913) was legally seized by the Nazi regime for inclusion in the traveling exhibit, and his work was banned from German museums. 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. Henri Matisse was among the modernists derided by the Nazis. That did not stop them from stealing his art. At the Jeu [...]
Rachel Stern2025-07-23T18:00:05-04:00July 1st, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
This image-rich talk by Georgetown University professor Ori Z Soltes considers 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 Salomon 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, [...]
Rachel Stern2025-06-12T04:02:06-04:00May 16th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
This presentation by Irina Cărăbaș from the National University of Arts in Bucharest focusses on several key artistic and political contexts relevant to Brauner’s work and biography, as well as his reception in Romania. It is followed by a conversation with Nicola Baird, PhD. Introductory remarks by Sorina Neagu, Director of DOR – Romanian Diaspora. Image above: Victor Brauner, Composition, not dated, oil on canvas, 53,5 x 64,5 cm, National Museum of Arts of Romania, Bucharest (INV. 73973/8502) © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris 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. [...]
Rachel Stern2025-06-25T13:33:20-04:00May 12th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In this book talk, author Michelle Young presents 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. Image above: Book Cover THE ART SPY. The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Vallant by Michelle Young (Harper One, May 13, 2025) 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 [...]
Rachel Stern2025-07-09T14:20:40-04:00April 28th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In this book talk, author Rebecca Brenner Graham, Ph.D. speaks about “DEAR MISS PERKINS. A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany,” which focusses on an unknown aspect of Frances Perkins’ prolific career as the first woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, the longest-serving labor secretary, and an architect of the New Deal. 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 [...]
Rachel Stern2025-05-21T13:43:04-04:00April 28th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Join curator Alison de Lima Greene 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. Image above: Tamara de Lempicka, Portrait of a Young Woman in a Blue Dress, 1922, oil on canvas, private collection © 2025 Tamara de Lempicka Estate, LLC / ADAGP, Paris / ARS, NY, Image © 2023 Christie's Images Limited 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 [...]
Rachel Stern2025-05-07T13:42:45-04:00April 15th, 2025|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Presentation by Carey Mack Weber, Curator and Director, Fairfield University Art Museum, followed by a conversation with Fleischmann’s cousin, Barbara Rosenberg Loss. Introductory remarks by Stephanie Buhmann, PhD, Head of Visual Arts, Architecture and Design at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York. Image above: Trude Fleischmann, Sandra and Barbara with Golden Heart Necklaces, 1951, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Barbara Rosenberg Loss. © Trude Fleischmann After opening her own studio in Vienna at the age of just 25, Trude Fleischmann (1895-1990) had great success there in the 1920s and 30s photographing artists, dancers, actors, and other key cultural figures of the era. When the Nazis invaded during the Anschluss in 1938, she fled first [...]
